If I want to attempt to “read the times” to help me navigate the risks and opportunities in front of me, I will not only want someone who is a thought leader in macroeconomics, but also a heart leader in the visible and invisible levers that must be mindfully pulled on my Path to Value™. This conversation is with such a leader. Harvard educated in business, with a passion and expertise in music, and a thoughtful student of human behavior… Anna Rathbun, Chief Investment Officer for CBIZ.
Innovation. Is it derived from people, process, or technology… or all 3? When we have great conversations, it usually is a quest to discover the genesis of the idea that prompts a person to invent, change, and, of course, lead. That who, that why, that process is core to our conversations. I hope you enjoy the August playlist and discover for something that leads to your why.
As we publish the June 2021 Great Conversation Playlist, we are struck with the ancient notion that leadership navigates between the collegial and the solitary; the master and the masterless. It is a dance. It can be poetry in motion. It can be potholes on a lonely virgin road. The leaders in this series have it all. Pull up to the roundtable for a great conversation.
Like a pebble thrown into the water, each of our conversations enters the vast waters of our markets and world, rippling outward, and touching people in profound ways. You barely notice the outlying circles, of many ideas until you are living them. Join another Great Conversation with this playlist for May.
In our conversations, we meet leaders who are actively conscious. They ponder their experiences and the hard facts of their reality, and believe they have the opportunity for innovation and change. Enjoy the March 2021 playlist and take away a few nuggets that will energize your next steps on your path to value.
The word ‘Why’ seems to be the calling of this generation. Answering the big causal question. The Great Conversation is no different. Answering the ‘why’ is a source of individual empowerment, team efficacy, and generational transformation. This months playlist promises to feed you with ideas that will empower your ‘why’.
Just when you thought you knew the shape of the access control market, change happens. It can be disconcerting. But if you are looking beyond the product into how events are changing the fundamentals of the vendor playbook, you might just be able to keep yourself from biting at product bait, and be able to ascertain who the next leaders are and how they will get there. Enjoy our conversation with author Lee Odess on our broadcast.
Innovation is the positive response to crisis. We have three leaders this week who have taken what the world has supplied us and used it to strengthen their approach to their business. We find the core disciplines needed to thrive are still in place: leadership, organizational strength, a methodology for success, the resources needed to aggregate, manage, and communicate intelligence that will impact the business, and, finally, the rightsized technology to augment the human.
Nick Weber, a strategic risk consultant, sits down with us and we end up on a journey that starts with the nature of work to the nature of work in security today. We walk away acknowledging that this is a road less travelled.
We had just come off a call with Dr. Rob McKenna speaking about work life balance on his weekly, free leadership series. For Nick, work life balance is probably not an accurate term. He sees work as tied to purpose and passion and, therefore, as more of a river. A river is not linear. You ride the river allowing it to take you, but not control you.
We also talked about the unique problems with our critical infrastructure as well as a surprising way of seeing how our dysfunction may have strengthened our resilience.
I asked Nick to treat me as a client and ask me the questions he would ask in his first meeting. They were questions designed to measure my program as well as my leadership. I think you will appreciate the approach.
Kip Boyle, the CEO of Cyber Risk Opportunities, runs a virtual CISO for business leaders who need leadership and advice in protecting their companies. Seasoned decision makers that are held back by a threat or a perceived lack of discipline that is constraining their business but cannot afford a full-time leader or a team, turn to Kip for “fractional” ownership over the cyber risk.
We are seeing the idea of renting a CSO or CISO is becoming more urgent given the state of risk, the breadth of knowledge and resources needed to manage it, and the evolving landscape of technology. Like any business decision, it is multi-dimensional. He lists three examples of this in our conversation.
“A lot of decision makers have not caught on to the fact that cyber was once seen as obscure” said Kip. “Cyber is now a bonafide business risk, not just a technology issue. It should be a peer risk with operational line of businesses and disciplines that can threaten the viability and long-term prospects of the business.”
Kip terms this a management opportunity in his new book: Fire Doesn’t Innovate: The Executive’s Practical Guide to Thriving in the Face of Evolving Cyber Risks featured on our resource page.
Robert Dodge is the President of Corporate Risk Services at one of the largest security companies in the world; G4S. I wanted to pick his brain on how G4S is innovating in this rapidly changing world. What I discovered is an organization that can meet you where you are and rapidly shift to downsizing or scaling for growth to meet demand. Robert talks a lot about agility. And he has architected his services to meet the speed of a changing business climate.
One of the key pillars of the current and future strategy for growth is the Risk Operations Center (ROC). I was able to tour this in February before The Great Conversation in Palm Beach, Florida. This center contains predictive and proactive intelligence, executive protection, and real time command and control.
This fully leverages the 600,000 security professionals on the ground by marrying this “human sensor” with fully automated intelligence and monitoring. Robert called it “Intelligence-led Risk Management”. He has effectively converged the silos of excellence that have been architected over the last 65 years.
All three of our conversations pointed to a reimagination of leadership, and for Kip and Robert, the business model of security. Change is a constant. Risks are not going away. We need to invest in hiring and training for mindset, be it a vendor or an employee.
Enjoy the conversations. And remember, membership is free. The price for leveraging the knowledge: priceless.
Can you hear me now? This could be a question coming from the security industry. How many years have we suffered a crucial piece of information because we could not hear, be heard, or be understood? The Security Industry Association (SIA) intends to change that with an innovative new Audio and Intelligent Communications Workgroup. We have posted a video conversation with the new leaders of the working group and this short blog.
In our strategic valuation assessments, we are always stressing the windows of opportunity do not stay open for long. This underlines the need to be students of value opportunities, and be prepared when they cross your radar. This week’s conversations all have a different approach, but they all practice Carpe diem.
The Mind of the Investor is a useful tool for business strategy and planning. It can provide you a glimpse of where change might occur. We are featuring an investor thought leader in our leadership series. The conversation is exciting as we begin to peel back the onion on the fourth industrial revolution.
The Rubik’s Cube is a study of randomized, messy configurations of disparate pieces of information that you need to study and configure into an intelligible pattern. You solve it one facet and face at a time. The conversations we showcase this week are really a study in how different leaders are leveraging people and information to make order our of their program and their world.
The digital transformation of our leadership is activated through a recent new publication by one of our community members, George Finney, CSO of Southern Methodist University. We have a great conversation with him and learn that we can develop constructive ‘habits’ that can protect us personally and professionally.
We are always searching for leadership principles anchored by sound strategy and execution methodologies, buttressed by technology, that will take our industry to the next level. This week features a great conversation with 4 leaders on risk management and some practical innovations that we can deploy today.
