If you look at the CVs of CEOs and Board members within successful major corporate organisations, you’ll no doubt discover a wealth of experience. These people have backgrounds that include spells in finance, law, human resources, marketing, planning and operations. They may well have worked on the international stage, and will have broad perspectives built on experience both in their own market sectors and elsewhere.
What will be missing on those CVs – except in companies that provide security equipment or services – will be any sort of career history with a focus on security. An individual who has held senior security positions with, say, a financial institution, a pharmaceutical manufacturer or a retail chain will not emerge as the CEO of a major leisure group.
However, an accountant who has similarly worked in a range of organisations might well head up a corporate entity. It may be the case that he or she has spent some time in a single company and knows it intimately, having filled positions in accounts receivable, payroll, facilities management and strategic planning. Alternatively, they may have come from a totally different environment, and are simply good ‘figures’ people, outstanding strategists or visionary motivators.
For the purposes of this discourse, we’re not about stating that this should now be happening for security practitioners. Rather, it’s time to explore what could make it possible for them to hold a higher office.
Strengths… and weaknesses
First off, let’s take a look at the corporate security manager’s strengths. Some of them sound prosaic: honest, hard-working, ready to meet challenges, experienced in dealing with people and the wider world. All of which are invaluable skills. That said, the greatest attribute is the security professional’s breadth of vision and work experience, including activities at the international level (possibly in hostile environments).
Few people have the opportunity – indeed the need – to learn about and understand the organisation as widely as the security manager. He or she usually enjoys access to all areas of strategy and operation, needs to understand the whole process of business survival and recovery, must know how the operation works in order to protect it and has to be on first name terms with a large percentage of the workforce (from management downwards).
Now, let’s evaluate the security manager’s weaknesses. They’re probably not a lifetime ‘security person’. A security role may well have arisen after 20 years’ service in the police or the Armed Forces (but let’s not rehash the difference between enforcing the law, fighting wars and designing corporate security).
Traditionally, too, he or she may not have a background of formal academic achievement to graduate level, though that situation is changing. Many Board members may be in the same position. Certainly, the possession of a degree smoothes the path to the top in a way that’s disproportionate to the level of lifetime achievement involved.
More to the point, however, is the tendency of security managers to fail in ‘thinking outside of the box’. At this juncture, apologies are due to every SMT reader who may feel offended by this statement. It remains a fact that many individuals operating in our profession – although possessing considerable analytical skills and an ability to think laterally – close their minds when it comes to thinking as a ‘Company’ man or woman. They view themselves as security people only, and thus others view them in that same light.
Changing the status quo?
Rightly or wrongly, security managers think of themselves as ineligible for the CEO role, would be unwilling to move sideways to another function in order to gain a different kind of experience and so realise their own self-defeating prophecy.
How, then, might we arrive at a situation in which the security guru can see himself as a realistic candidate for the CEO’s job, in competition with the legal counsel, head of operations, head of marketing or the human resources director?
Perhaps the current void that needs to be filled lies in two areas. One is relatively easy to quantify, and relates to a lack of skills.
Has the security manager cross-trained in the work of other areas so that, say, they don’t merely know the theory of how their own company produces widgets, but are trained to produce them in their own right?
The second and somewhat more elusive gap lies in the area of perception. As long as we encourage our people to think of security as being something special, something stuck on the side to ‘police’ the rest, then it will never come to be seen as part of mainstream corporate life. Is there a way forward?
We need true dedicated lifetime security professionals who understand strategic planning, plus (perhaps) an MBA to go with the MSc, or a human resources qualification to sit alongside CPP.
Once in the corporate environment, these people should be seen at across-the-board briefings, seminars and meetings. They should be contributing outside of their specialist area, and volunteering for working parties and research initiatives.
Corporate management discipline
If you’ve reached this point in my article with a feeling of disbelief that the group chief executive of International Cardboard plc could come from either a security or risk management background, then this is a classic indication of just how much needs to be done before the profession of security is viewed as a true corporate management discipline.
The Security Institute has now evolved in a focused way to be one that – in the words of Patron Sir John Stevens in his Foreword to the Institute’s 2004 Yearbook – promotes “the achievement and recognition of professional standards and the development of Best Practice in security management”.
Central to the achievement of those goals is the underpinning need to ensure that CEOs, Board members and human resources directors are able to understand and measure the competencies of the security strategists whom they’re recruiting.
Directly related to that need is the requirement that, when security practitioners are ‘measured up’, they have in their portfolio a range of diverse skills, experiences, aptitudes and the right attitude that bode well for that step up beyond corporate security director to the Board Room and then on to the top job.
In other words, it’s entirely up to us.
