The Great Conversation

You only represent 2% of the population, but you are the most targeted religious group in the country with over 60% of the hate crimes committed against your constituency. You can’t sit on the sidelines. You must be engaged with the right people, process, technology, and partners if you hope to provide protection in the “most complex, dynamic, risk environment ever”.

We engaged the Principal Deputy Director and COO, Patrick Daly of the Secure Community Network (SCN) to help us understand what the threat is and how to mitigate and respond to it.

SCN is The Secure Community Network (SCN) is the official safety and security organization of the Jewish community in North America. It provides Intelligence and Information Sharing, Facility Assessments, Physical Security Solution Support, Training, Exercise and Education, a partnership with Law Enforcement, and Incident Response and Crisis Management.

Patrick is responsible for strategic planning, organizational management and Board engagement of the official homeland security initiative for the American Jewish Community. He oversees coordination and engagement between federal law enforcement and over 200 organizations. SCN is recognized by U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a national model.

We have a great conversation with a resolute and passionate advocate for the security and safety of this country and his stakeholders.

We need a wider lens in business. We have been trained to think in terms of specialization and we have created silos of information that serve our interests. But the platform for widening our lens is now available. And more than ever we need that lens.

With that said, if we scrape the top layer of the news, we are dealing with illness as a threat, disinformation as a threat, privacy vs. safety and security as a threat, and the proliferation of actors who are inspired to action by the fear of change promulgated by the social and public media. I needed to speak with someone who understood all of these things and is helping executives reassess how they identify, manage, and respond to threats to their people, processes, tools, and organizational outcomes.

I could not help myself. When I have a chance to pick the brain of a person who has the training and experience as a licensed psychologist, certified health service provider in psychology, and as a state-certified police officer (now retired from law enforcement), I know I am going to get a unique perspective leveraging the field of forensic & law enforcement psychology and the work in behavioral threat assessment & management.

We have a great conversation; wide ranging, with a thread connecting the subjects we touched on: to the degree we are investing in the purpose-driven connection between our stakeholders lives and our business, lies the strength and resilience of our organization.

Vitaly Geyman had a great conversation with us several months ago that we called “The Organization is not a Machine; It is a Person”. We explored the traditional view and practice that led to the organizations being treated like a machine. Machines are meant to be programmed, streamlined, and optimized. Efficiency and predictability are the core principles. Management’s key responsibility is the machine’s design and programming while the employees’ role is to contribute their efforts according to the machine’s design.

Vitaly suggested a wider perspective where we view the organization as a living system. We see that it operates in the context of an ecosystem of interdependent entities working together for the good of the whole. We see how it can learn and adapt to its environment. Going beyond a living system perspective and viewing it as a living being shifts our focus and opens up new possibilities. We see it as a creative force contributing to our world. We see it as one who can learn and adopt, sense and respond. We see it as a living person with a soul, a heart and a personality to be nurtured and developed. We help it grow in capability and maturity so that it can reach its fullest potential.

In this conversation we explore how he works with clients. As a business strategist myself, I recognize the power of his approach: To learn the past, present, and future story that is being told by the leaders and the prevailing culture and then to integrate this story into the operational fabric of the organization. Stories create alignment if especially if you allow your people to contribute to the story. The chapters of innovation that could be written and released may change the world.

Enjoy the conversation.

Our world operates on a highly leveraged business model that depends on the belief in a civil society. A society of agreed upon values doesn’t require police presence in every store and stoplight. There are laws that are respected and adhered to by an engaged citizenry.

But what happens when this breaks down? Where there is intentionality in the crime, you have a mindset and a process that you can study, patterns you can document, and technology to help your drive predictability and post-event discovery.

Dr. Read Hayes is a research scientist at the University of Florida as well as the Director of the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC). The LPRC is made up of researchers, retailers, solution partners, manufacturers, law enforcement professionals and many more who believe developing a community will lead to a safer world.

The Loss Prevention Research Council was founded in 2000 by leading retailers and Dr. Read Hayes in an effort to support the evidence-based needs of loss prevention decision-makers. Founding retailers include Target, Walmart, OfficeMax, CVS, GAP, Home Depot, Beall’s, Barnes and Noble, and has grown to over 70 major retail chains today. To date the LPRC has conducted over 300 real-world loss prevention research projects for retailers and partners.

Dr. Hayes and I discuss the purpose and strategies of the ecosystem the LPRC has developed, its findings and impact, and his work in developing a framework for early detection. Although the focus is retail, he knows his research, findings, and the proof of concepts he is developing with leading technology providers will translate into the smart buildings and cities of the future.

Tyson Aiken is a former executive at Nike with an intelligence background from the CIA. He left Nike and went on a journey exploring different opportunities in the commercial marketplace. When I spoke with him before and during his “sabbatical”, I discovered that his purpose and passion could never be realized in a typical security executive role. I felt he needed to be ‘at the executive table’, like many of his peers but with one striking difference: he needed an organizational model anchored with core values and a mission he could believe in.

He found one with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a global company with over 4,000 people, many who are thought leaders in their field. Navigating risk and the opportunity to save endangered species and the world, WCS could be classified as a “security and safety” organization for animals and its people.

This great conversation explores .com, .gov, and .org business models, the way growth and profit can obstruct good judgement, and the integration of the business model with a data driven security model.

Enjoy the conversation!

CEOs manage risk and opportunity. How well they do that determines their path to value.

So, who should be at the table helping the C-level team navigate risk and opportunity? What data should be collected, organized, analyzed, and communicated? How should it be contextualized to meet the needs of each departmental function? (HR, Legal, Finance, Operations, etc.).

Once these questions are answered you suddenly realize that the success of the next generation risk, resilience, and security leader will depend on their ability to grasp how the digital transformation is positioning them for a strategic role in the organizational outcomes of the business. The tail (Security) may be wagging the dog (The Business) very soon… a paradigm shift.

We have a great conversation with the founders of a protective intelligence platform, Lukas Quanstrom and Tom Kopecky of Ontic, that have recently articulated this vision and is actively creating a community of like-minded leaders across the ecosystem.

Every profession has its pioneers. The ones who worked with sticky notes and clunky first-generation SQL databases. They had the opportunity and skills to create, document, and teach their learnings to future generations. And they had a front row seat to how their ideas evolved into the future.

Scott Stewart, Vice President of Intelligence for TorchStone Global,  is one of those pioneers for protective intelligence and counter surveillance. We had the opportunity to meet at a protective intelligence summit hosted by Ontic and we decided to compare notes on our learnings in this great conversation podcast.

You get a sense of the man, the profession, and the future of the risk, resilience, and security industry as one of the great enablers of organizational strength and competitiveness.

Enjoy the conversation.

In this conversation, we have the opportunity to dive into how technology may disrupt the executive protection profession. Most of us recognize that our brains are wired to resist uncertainty. We seem to grasp and hold on to the potential negative outcomes rather than seize the uncertain opportunities that stare us in the face.

Mark Ledlow has dealt with uncertainty and fear. And he has been paid to remove it for his clients. To help them fear less. Interesting enough, he shows his courage by being transparent about the gut check he gave himself after attending a protective intelligence summit hosted by Ontic, a technology company. He sees the change and his need to adapt and it makes for a great conversation. Mark is the CEO of Ledlow Security Group that provides Physical Security, Site Security, Supply Chain Security, Disaster Response Teams, and Executive Protection for High Networth Families and Executives.

He also hosts The Fearless Mindset Podcast where he welcomes the security Industry's best and brightest to learn about the tactics and strategies they use to protect the world's wealthiest families during these unprecedented times. 

He is a successful entrepreneur (Shooter Detection Systems), CEO (Milcom Security Solutions), and a sought-after board advisor (Fusus). He is adept at identifying needs and finding the means to deliver value. It isn’t a surprise then, that he is flying to the border of Poland and Ukraine on Saturday, May 28, to attempt to make life a little bit easier for the soldiers and the refugees of this terrible conflict.

We have a great conversation with Christian Connors who traveled to Medyka Poland to assist the World Central Kitchen in their efforts to provide Ukrainian refugees with food. He has a GoFundMe page to buy items that bring a smile to the faces of these amazing people. These items include Coca-Cola, M&Ms, Red Bull, kid’s toys and new mother's assistance such as diapers and pacifiers. Christian pays for his own travel costs and 100% of the funds go to buying items that are not available at the border crossing.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if The Great Conversation community takes action on this idea by donating to the World Central Kitchen and/or the GoFundMe fundraiser? Ideas shape markets. Ideas can change the world.

The greatest challenge of our time is challenging the notion that our democratic ideals no longer work in a world dominated by authoritarians acting with impunity on the world stage. As well, when our own leaders or institutions fail us, we still need people who can stand in the gap.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” Isaiah 6:8

This quote is often spoken over the graves of our fallen warriors. The context: the world is falling apart. Confidence in institutions and leaders have fallen apart. But there are those that still answer the call to protect us.

I was able to sit down with a prolific best-selling author who, under the guise of telling an incredibly fast paced and exciting thriller architected around a former Navy Seal Sniper, has created a powerful path to value for all of us.

The books are interlaced with powerful ideas around purpose, mission, passion, and courage juxtaposed against evil, the erosion of personal freedom, the counterfeit ideas of misguided faith, and the leverage and management of fear.

The author, Jack Carr, is a former Navy Seal who led special operations teams as a team leader and platoon and troop commander in hot spots around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. But he is so much more. Well read, a student of history and warfare, with a life-long interest in taking his learnings and translating them into powerful stories, Jack Carr is now on the cusp of releasing his fifth book, In the Blood. He has released one every year since 2018. And this year, his main character, James Reese, will appear on Amazon Prime set for July 2022.

We have a great conversation around his great character and his path to value. We find the path is ours as well.