Fear, uncertainty, and doubt: the three horsemen that conspire to derail us from prospering in a volatile and ever-changing world. The new playlist for July is an antidote not by applying a band aid, but getting to the core of who we are, and how we can be successful.
You can find these conversations by going to Google, Apple, Spotify or Podbean or direct from our website.
We also have maintained the practice of refreshing 2020 conversations for those that missed them last year. It is fun and engaging to know you are listening to many of them during the pandemic and, in some cases, before they made career adjustments or life hacks (like books, white papers, or even a podcast).
Thank you all for brokering the relationships that fuel these conversations. Keep listening and learning; and impact your family, community, and your world.
Here are short descriptions of our great conversations:
Confronting the Fear of the Surveillance State
You hear of it all the time. When an incident occurs; a fire, an earthquake, or an active shooter, we want to know who was in the building. Or when we are working late at night in a building with heat and lighting controls, why does it not just sense my presence and adjust my section of the building accordingly? We have the technology to do both, and it is improving over time.
We had a great conversation with the Chief Product Officer of Ontic, Manish Mehta and the CEO of turnstile-based access control company Orion, Steve Caroselli, to discuss their early discussions in engaging this challenge. And in return we uncover the recognition that fear, uncertainty and doubt can radically change a market forcing innovations in technology, business models, and security.
Completing the Intelligence Picture through Sound
According to one source, 75% of Workplace Violence (WPV) incidents occur in hospitals. And like hospitals, most companies only have one solution, call the security guard or police once the incident has already occurred. By then, someone is already likely to be hurt. What would happen to the internal evaluation of your security department if you were able to respond earlier and more effectively through a sensor that understood the conversation was escalating, or a shot had been fired, a window has been broken, or your patient had fallen out of bed?
We seek to find the answers through a great conversation with the executive team of Sound Intelligence, a global audio analytics firm. Derek van der Vorst, has had an international career in audio and speech recognition at Philips Electronics, He pioneered advanced audio analytics with his company Sound Intelligence (founded in 2000). He combines a deep understanding of the core audio analytics technology with a natural sense for what customers want to achieve with this technology. Derek has grown Sound Intelligence to become the market leader in audio analytics with tens of thousands of systems deployed around the world. He is joined by his VP of Sales, Michael Campbell, and his Director of Sales and Product Management, Dave Stanfield.
VX: On the Frontier of the Value Exchange with Dr. Read Hayes
Dr. Read Hayes is a research scientist at the University of Florida and the Director of the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC). The University of Florida received two significant grants, one from a leader in artificial intelligence, Nvidia, and the other from the State of Florida that, combined are helping to make the university an elite institution of higher learning. They have an Innovation Square where they are testing new technology and new methods for creating a safe and secure campus. Over 150 companies are paying the LPRC and the university to benchmark these technologies and these emerging best practices so they can leverage technology to make better data driven decisions. We have a great and inspiring conversation that leads us to believe that culturally crossing the chasm of our fear and constraints to a Value Exchange (VX) that values the safety and security of people, is rapidly becoming a reality.
Snow Day: A Profile of the Best Leaders in a Crisis
I first met Mark McCourt, when I was mustering media partners for The Great Conversation in Security in 2005. He was the founder, publisher, and executive director of the leading media-centric company in the security market.
Since 2016 he has been a strategic advisor to many of the leading companies in the risk, resilience, and security industry.
Now he has authored a book called Snow Day, that captures how the best risk leaders in the industry have been successful. And what is interesting is he started having conversations with them amid the pandemic.
Where does the title come from? Well, like Mark, we both grew up in the 60s. While attending elementary school there was not a website to check on the status of school. There was not a robocall system. It was not featured news on a local cable channel There was no cable channel. So, if the snow started falling, we had Moms who developed a phone chain. That is, my mom would get the call from another mom, and then she had to make a call to the next mom on the list. As kids, we could not wait to get that call.
Mark uses this metaphor to launch a great conversation with a question: What are the ‘best of the best leaders’ in our industry doing to prepare their companies for a crisis? This conversation will inspire you to take your company to the next level for the sake of yourself, your peers, your family, and your company.
Mark will be one of the featured speakers at The Executive Summit Series on October 6, 2021, at The Boeing Company in Washington, DC. Lynn Mattice, Managing Director of Mattice and Associates and President of the National Economic Security Alliance (NESA) will be the master of ceremonies at this leadership forum.
The Magic Keys of Leadership
Carlos Francisco spent 21 years at Walt Disney Company informing and infusing his leadership principles. Today he is an executive at Facebook with a new book launching around the same time as this podcast: “So You Want to Get into Corporate Security”. We have a great conversation around putting the magic in your personal and professional life through the Magic Keys.
You also can hear Carlos have his own great conversations through his podcast The Corporate Security Translator The Corporate Security Translator Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
Piercing the Veil to get to the Truth.
I used this title for the podcast because the gentlemen I asked to join me in a conversation, presented several times at The Great Conversation over the years. And he was always piercing the veil of convention to get to the truth. I called him a muckraker in the podcast. A little history: muckrakers were reform-minded journalists who reported on the irregularities in established institutions and leaders of their day.
The term now references investigative journalism.
Steve Hunt has always sought the truth.
Our great conversation leverages his work with Communities of Excellence, online mentoring platform for security and cybersecurity professionals as well as his survey of over 400 organizations where he sought to understand what made them cyber resilient.
What he found is a leadership lesson that you must hear to appreciate.
Uniquely Designed for Impact
Mark Demos has a unique gift. He helps people have the confidence, courage, and the tools to find themselves. He wrote a book called The DNA Code: The Forensics of Purpose, Passion and Performance, is the defining work for discovering your Life Purpose. Using the most innovative, exciting, and scientifically comprehensive discovery process of the 21st Century, Positive Forensics, you will discover the hard-wired DNA Talent Markers that map out your life path.
The DNA Code will give you the pathway to profile your purpose and predict your future success.
We discuss the top 10 questions we should be asking ourselves to challenge our assumptions of who we should be and what we should do.
Everything is Becoming Smart: We Need to Engage Technology so Technology can Engage Us.
Seen by his industry as a thought leader, we have a great conversation with Morgan Hertel, the Vice President of Technology, and Innovation of Rapid Response Monitoring Services. He lets us get up close and really see how he has continued to innovate within his company.
One of the first things we explore is Natural Language Processing (NLP) and how he applied it early on. At first the customer base was confused. They had little experience with voice enabled systems. Like many innovations, they had to experience it. Morgan takes us through this transition and the powerful new trends using voice and audio that are happening today and in the future.
Morgan is in the Audio and Intelligent Communications Working Group of the Security Industry Association (SIA).
Entering the Mind of an Entrepreneur
I was introduced to Michael Zalle, the CEO & founder of Yellowbird, by one of our Great Conversation leaders. Zalle is a voracious student of people and how they try to get things done. This is a unique trait of a successful entrepreneur. He has also always attempted to “use technology differently”.
We discuss his journey, his unique way of seeing the world, and the unique value proposition of his latest company that is disrupting how companies can source expertise on demand to optimize their budget, process, and value.
Michael likes to say “You have finite resources. How do you optimize them?” In the people world, he is currently using technology (an on-demand platform) to optimize heavily constrained and backlogged Environmental Health & Safety assessments and audits. He has set up a Global infrastructure that identifies, vets, and connects the skill set of subject matter experts in the $9B compliance marketplace.
As promised, here is a refresh of some of the 2020 conversations we had.
Security, Safety, and Sustainability: The Three-Legged Chair
Inge Huijbrechts, Global Senior Vice President Responsible Business and Safety & Security, provides us an insight into how these three domains work together, that is the sum of the parts over each individual strand. We learn how Sustainability, Safety & Security inspire and create awareness in a distributed environment, especially post COVID-19 when Tourism and Travel operate with minimal resources. We learn how we innovate in the built environment to adjust to the new normal post COVID-19. And we learn how the intersection between corporate responsibility and security become a force multiplier for risk mitigation.
Security by Design
Kent Howard, Verizon’s Global Corporate Security Operations Manager, discusses how his background in physical and information security led him to a best practice called “Security by Design.” He is one of the key resources inside Verizon’s Information Security Risk Management. By deploying ESRM and infusing the methodology with his experience with security technology, he has developed critical analytical problem-solving skills. He is the published author of Security by Design within the Journal of Physical Security.
Taking the Road Less Travelled
Sarah Powell, Director of Emergency Management at Temple University, shares the non-linear path from medical anthropologist to emergency management that created a different way to understand and operationalize her role at Temple University. We explore the Mind of the Leader that requires a focus on the assumptions that undergird the business and the possible way those assumptions could be disrupted creating risk as well as opportunity.
Sarah infuses into her role and her thinking a deep insight into human behavior, psychology, cognition, and culture. She is above all, committed to the human factor to create great outcomes in her role at Temple and in the world.
The ESRM Imperative
Tim Wenzel, Head of Global Security, Privacy Protection, and Jonathon Harris, former Guidepost consultant and now with Group337, provide us their perspective on ESRM. Is this really the framework that establishes relationships with the business as well as acts as the platform for merging risk, TQM, and compliance into an executable strategy and plan?
The InfraGard Advisory
Andrew Lanning, the co-Founder of Integrated Security Technology, a leading consulting and integration firm in Hawaii, shares his work and experience with InfraGard, a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector for the protection of U.S. Critical Infrastructure. Andrew underlines the strategic importance their advisory provides to organizations viability and competitive position in the market.
Andrew is a prolific and generous contributor to the risk, resilience, and security industry. In addition to Infragard, where he serves as the Chairman of the Electronic Security Industry Cross Sector Council, He also is the Treasurer of the National Defense Industrial Association that drives strategic dialogue in national security, an active member and advocate for Woman in Security through the Security Industry Association (SIA), and does his part to contribute to the Great Conversation in Security by hosting the broadcast “Security Matters”.
The Opportunity for Leadership
Dave Komendat, the CSO of Boeing, shares with us how the pandemic confirmed the depth of character, leadership and resilience of his company and his team.
Dave is vice president and Chief Security Officer for The Boeing Company. Appointed in 2008, Komendat is responsible for the company’s global security and fire protection policy and procedures, site security, executive protection, supply chain and aviation security, structural and aircraft fire protection, government and proprietary information security, strategic intelligence, international security, business continuity and disaster preparedness, and security background investigations.
Komendat is also the lead Boeing interface for both national and international security policy engagement with numerous government and industry advisory groups. He currently represents Boeing as president of the International Security Management Association, past co-chairman and current board member on the Domestic Security Alliance Council and serves as a member of the Threats and Information Committee for the Overseas Security Advisory Council.
Komendat holds board leadership roles in many non-profits with missions to protect people within the U.S. and internationally, including Hostage U.S., International Security Foundation, and the Domestic Security Partnership. In 2018, he was awarded the Director’s Award for Exceptional Public Service by FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Komendat graduated from California State University at Long Beach with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice specializing in industrial security and is a graduate of the executive development program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Komendat joined Boeing as an industrial security specialist in 1986.