At Bryghtpath, we’re often asked about risks and threats faced by Senior Executives of major corporations and non-profits – and how to best go about planning for those risks.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through our experiences with protecting senior executives. Topics discussed include executive protection, travel security, office security, security at an executive’s home, and events/appearances that may pose an additional risk.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:            We’ve been asked recently about executive services or executive protection. How does a company or organization go about protecting their senior executives? What do other companies do? We get asked that a lot. Like, compare us to other organizations in our industry. Or it’s just the question that I think we got early November was, look, our CEO is speaking at this big event. We don’t really ever do anything for their personal protection. Should we be doing something?

Jen Otremba:               The answer is yes.

Bryan Strawser:            The answer is probably yes.

Jen Otremba:               If you’re asking the question, the answer is probably yes.

Bryan Strawser:            So let’s lay some background before we get into the solution to this challenge. Corporate executives, nonprofit executives, public sector commissioners and others that run big agencies, they have varying levels of risk, but their risk is not like the risk of a typical employee, as much as they might want to make themselves out to be everyday Joe or Jane. They’re representing their organization. There’s a certain level of risk that goes with that leadership job that they’re in.

Jen Otremba:               They’re the public face of the organization.

Bryan Strawser:            They’re the public face.

Jen Otremba:               When people have a beef with the organization, chances are your face, senior leader, is the one that they’re going to have the beef with.

Bryan Strawser:            In all of this, and you’re going to hear us say this several times, there’s a very difficult balance to achieve that’s a little unique to the culture of the organization that we’re talking about, but I don’t know many CEOs that want to isolate themselves from the world or their employees. At the same time, none of them want to be in any personal danger, or if they think about this. A lot of them don’t think about this at all, but none of them wants to be in a place where there could be harm brought to them or their families or that other people they work with could be in harm’s way because of them. And so there has to be a balance struck, as there always is on security issues, between how we protect the organization and the people and still run the business and let the CEO and other C-suite executives be available to employees and the public and others as appropriate.

Jen Otremba:               Right and manage the way they want to manage or they choose to manage.

Bryan Strawser:            So there’s interesting risks that goes with executives. We’re kind of using the generic term executives here. We’re generally talking about the CEO, but depending upon your organization and the size of your organization and its prevalence in society, we might really be talking about many others in your company. It could be the CFO. It could be your general counsel. It could be the head of a division. It just depends on your organization’s unique place in the community and how well-known that executive is.