A small but growing theat

When looking at senior managers who have fallen victim to the demand for change, you are struck by the singularity of their explanation (“It’s not my fault!”).

Typically, I have found that the reasoning behind senior level changes has not been rooted in some monumental horror, but rather a basic failure to grasp the fact that senior management roles are highly political and require a definitive set of skills.

The first of those skills is the inherent ability to develop an appropriate strategy. When stepping up to the strategic plate, all senior managers must be able to know and answer some very hard questions that eventually lead to the building of processes. Processes that, in turn, translate into effective solutions. Solutions which, if they fail, are clear and incontrovertible. Although in some organisations you’ll be able to hide for a time, any failure in the corporate environment will be deemed inexcusable and ruthlessly rooted out.

While devising a strategy is not in itself overly difficult, compiling one that works for your organisational culture and addresses your blended threat most certainly is. However, that is why you are paid the salary you are paid.

Many of the issues you face at senior management level are common to all corporations. As such, you will be confronted by serious political manoeuvrings in the first minute of Day One as experienced Board members (with their developed views of the world) view you, the security professional, as part of the problem and not the solution.

To overcome this, I would encourage all would-be senior executives to prepare well in advance of their appointment. Do not leave preparation until the interview. Where to begin that preparation is largely dependent on the situation. That said, there are a number of common themes at play.

Delivering measurable outcomes

First among those themes are simple communication issues. Take, for example, the ubiquitous staffing problems. The issues surrounding training and hiring become far more complex, as you no longer have the simple choice between hiring experienced or inexperienced personnel. What you are faced with is the thorny issue of devising measurable outcomes in a language that your Boardroom colleagues will understand.

Exactly who these colleagues are, their background and their propensity may influence how you phrase your answers, but the cost benefit is likely to determine what you say. Politics will certainly influence the outcome.

Another issue facing you will be how to interpret the key indicators you’ve just inherited. What are you going to do to create an impact? Picture the scene… The previous incumbent in your role has spent (on average) seven years convincing his colleagues that 4% stock loss in the industry is an acceptable average. If you make a change to some process, no matter how minor, have failed to consider some apparently trivial detail and a loss arises, your first initiative will fail and you will remain either an outsider or, worse still, you’ll be ‘out’!

It follows, then, that a thorough grasp of management auditing is essential. Not confined to the subjective vagaries of SWOT or PESTLE analyses, but rather a full, in-depth impact analysis.

All strategies demand co-ordination between the major and minor elements of an organisation. As a professional security manager, you’ll know full well it is the small components that often pose the highest risk. High level planning must include an understanding of detailed processes and information systems (their advantages, shortcomings, lifecycles, development plans and the history of embedding them).

Securing agreement on this level of detail requires a significant amount of negotiation. To acquire this degree of knowledge, readers of Security Management Today are urged to look beyond the plethora of management theory. One personal favourite is Plato’s Symposium, from which Socratic debating skills might be acquired. Contrast this with the works of Milton Eriksson, whose humanitarian approach reduces problems to a list of human needs.

Workforce planning processes

Senior management also involves the direction and control of your own team of reports. Within this, you will need to consider a workforce planning process that must answer all of your line managers’ needs, balanced with those of the organisation. Losing members of your senior management team a few weeks after you start is accepted practice, but losing them all over the coming months is draining on the organisation and will bring into question your own management skills. You’ve been warned!

Although you will have a number of information streams feeding back on your reports, you must now start to groom those who will be replacing you. Effectively dealing with the ‘power play’ from senior managers requires a significant level of emotional intelligence (more than many managers realise, in fact, let alone admit).

While you are ‘siloed’ within the Security Department, the details of management are a means of escaping ultimate accountability. As the executive, you can no longer rely on your adherence to the Letter of the Law as protection against failure. Chief executives, on the other hand, learn that by removing you, matters will improve immediately (albeit temporarily). This simple fact alone serves to show the shareholder that the situation is under their control. As such, you need either a security blanket or an exit strategy!

Fortunately, an exit strategy within the security profession is easy to implement. Networking opportunities abound.

As far as the blanket is concerned, this really means ensuring that your contract covers all eventualities, no matter how your engagement terminates. Senior executives must bear different pressures to those of managers, thus they have dissimilar contractual obligations. Expect to have a contract in place that safeguards your future.

Securing your future

To secure your future, become adept at marketing yourself and your operation to Boardroom executives. Respond directly to their perceptions, not your own.

Learn from your every encounter and don’t be tempted to shy away from making your expectation of others known by using all of the debating skills you might muster.

Remember that it is the eyes and ears of the chief executive that will be judging you. No-one else. He or she will have half an eye on the shareholders. They no longer only look at you when things go wrong.