Security & Risk Management: Styles, Influences & Habits

Where did you learn management? 

By learn, I mean specific studies, education, research, application and refinement of a management system, inclusive of people. 

By management, I mean a learning, adaptive process to enable and enhance commercial results. 

If you were exposed, responsible or promoted within government services such as the police, military, intelligence or other public service roles, it is not the same as management and leadership in the commercial and corporate world. 

Government and public service management are unique and specific to the role and service it provides, which is not that of corporate or commercial security. 

This includes the management and delivery of commercial security services.

Have you studied leadership? 

Do you know the specific, qualitative and quantitive differences between leadership and management? 

Have you heard about the managerial grid developed in 1964? (Blake and Mouton, 1985)

Alternatively, is your leadership concept more akin to a title, role or seniority? 

What do you think of Peter Drucker’s works? 

Where does your experience come from?

I mean specific to a corporate or commercial environment. 

If you have a public service pedigree, which is dominant or more extended in years? 

Alternatively, is your management and leadership more of a mash-up of “The mongrel discipline of management” (Hurst 2013)

Did you know, 9 out of 10 private-sector employers would be unlikely to take employees offloaded from the public sector (Mullins, 2016)

Is your management style, influence or habits consistent and specific to your organisation and the prevailing culture? 

Do you know the difference? 

Do you understand, motivate and retain millennials? (Ashgar, 2014)

Have you learned any lesson’s from Google’s experiments and evaluations as a result of Project Oxygen? (Gavin, 2013)

Do you agree that business schools are not professional schools or a one-stop certification shop? (Barker, 2010)

Do you understand the rewards and damages that came from the Hawthorne studies? (Kiechel, 2012)

Where do you sit with regards to the view that corporate security professionals are a “hybrid agent between corporate and national security”? (Peterson, 2013) 

Did you know that security management, even today, “has been the subject of very little research or comments by management specialists? (Bamfield, 2014)

Considering all this, is your security and risk technical qualifications and skills commensurate with the required level of management? 

Alternatively, are they something you learned a long time ago, in a different role and environment? 

Security risk management is a learned and scientific process. 

It is not just something you “pick up” along the way. 

Far too many “security” practitioners and managers have learned the hard way that management is learned and taking one management concept or process form one business environment to another, like your laptop, doesn’t work. 

Failures, discontent, conflict and a significant waste of resources have resulted. 

Everyone in the security industry is then labelled and viewed the same, especially those with government, military, police and intelligence backgrounds. 

Evolve or die. 

It’s that brutal. 

You either hold your place in today’s corporate and commercial environment, or you don’t. 

If you aren’t relevant or adaptive today, tomorrow will see your demise. 

This remains my top piece of advice for those entering the security industry. 

It’s a shame, so many already in the industry haven’t listened or adapted too. 

The next generation may have an accessible path to success as they step over and overtake all those living in the “good old days”. 

Tony Ridley, 

Enterprise Security Risk Management & Security Science

References:

Asghar, R. (2014) Gen X Is From Mars, Gen Y Is From Venus: A Primer On How To Motivate A Millennial.

Bamfield, J. (2014) ‘Security and Risk Management’ in Gill, M. (ed) The Handbook of Security. 2nd edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan pp. 791-812.

Barker, R. (2010) ‘The Big Idea: No, Management is Not a Profession’, Harvard Business Review,  88(7/8), pp. 52-60.

Blake, R.R and Mouton , J.S (1985) The Managerial Grid III, Gulf Publishing 

Garvin, D. (2013) How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management, Harvard Business Review, 91(2), pp.74-82

Hurst, D. (2013) The Mongrel Discipline of Management.

Kiechel III, W. (2012) ‘The Management Century’, Harvard Business Review, 90(11), pp. 62–75. 

Mullins, L. (2016) Management and Organisational Behaviour. Harlow: Pearson. p. 369

Petersen, K. L. (2013) ‘The corporate security professional: A hybrid agent between corporate and national security’, Security Journal ,26(3), pp.222-235.