Security for Business Professionals

How to Plan, Implement, and Manage Your Company's Security Program

Bradley A. Wayland

• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780128005651
• eBook ISBN: 9780128006214
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Ciberseguridad

Security for Business Professionals offers business executives and managers everything they need to set-up a security program, especially for those who don't have the resources to hire an in-house security staff. It can also be used for assessing the adequacy of an existing security program. The book provides an overview of the key security objectives and challenges that managers face, such as how to measure the effectiveness of a security program and balance the costs and benefits. It also shows how to develop security procedures that conform to key regulatory requirements, and how to assess an organization's most important risks, vulnerabilities, and threats. Security for Business Professionals addresses key physical and informational security concerns, including areas such as asset protection, loss prevention, and personnel security. It also discusses how to develop emergency and incident response plans, and concludes with suggested safety and security exercises and training recommendations. - Written in an introductory and accessible way for those new to security. - Illustrates key concepts with case studies and real-world examples from a wide variety of industries. - Provides recommended readings and checklists for more in-depth coverage of each topic.

1

Leadership and Management

Abstract

This chapter discusses the differences between leadership and management and covers techniques and traits that are necessary for both.

Keywords

Accountability; Character; Communication; Courage; Decision making; Delegation; Empathy; Goals and expectations; Leadership techniques and traits; Leadership; Management; Optimism; Organizational structure

Leadership and, to a lesser degree, management are the key factors necessary to make any type of organization efficient and effective—in fact, I believe that leadership in particular is going to be the ultimate factor in determining the success or failure of any organization and the business in which a group of individuals is. Unfortunately, leadership and management are not effectively put into practice in a majority of instances; I think that almost everyone has seen numerous examples of poor leadership and management in their business experience. This occurs in spite of the thousands of books that are written on the subject, the high-dollar seminars, the many courses on leadership and management that are offered, along with the dozens of degrees that are available on subjects relating to both leadership and management.

Due to the many less-than-stellar leadership and management techniques that are practiced, supervisors and managers are unable to achieve the main purpose of effective supervision—gaining the maximum efficiency and effectiveness of their employees to ensure that they meet their business goals and objectives. We will look at techniques for both leadership and management (which I believe are two very different concepts) while providing some helpful guidelines that can help you to improve your own leadership and management.

1.1. Relation Between Leadership and Management

President Harry S. Truman had one of the better definitions of leadership, saying “A leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they do not want to do, and like it.” [1] With this definition in the forefront, leadership is something that is exclusively people-centric. Leadership deals mostly with people’s ability to communicate and interact with others to get them motivated and excited to accomplish tasks. Management differs from leadership. While it also concentrates on working with individuals, it is a process that is more focused on directing and controlling the affairs of a business, organization, or other body to ensure that it operates efficiently and effectively, to accomplish agreed-upon objectives [2]. In other words, leadership deals more with people, whereas management deals more with organizing the tasks that these people must accomplish to achieve business objectives. These two different aspects and definitions highlight the primary difference found between these two important functions. Although leadership and management both require skills to deal with people and to organize efforts and tasks, leadership is more directly linked to the ability to work and motivate people in order to get the most out of each individual, whereas management deals more with ensuring that the processes within an organization are understood, efficient, and measurable; stated otherwise, leadership is more focused on people and their wants and needs, and management is more focused on tasks.

Although there are differences between leadership and management, there is also a significant relationship between these two aspects. Good leaders must learn to practice good management techniques. Effective leadership requires the use of good management techniques, since good leaders must be able to efficiently delegate work and to ensure that all of their subordinates understand their roles and responsibilities. Unfortunately, the converse is not always the case, as many individuals who implement proper management techniques may not be good leaders. To better illustrate this relationship, let me tell you a story about a boss for whom I once worked. This individual had an extraordinary amount of leadership and management training and was very knowledgeable in both areas. This training equated with the fact that he was a very good manager—particularly in his ability to implement measurements that could identify problems within the organization. Unfortunately, this knowledge of good management techniques did not result in his being a good leader. Due to his strengths in management and measuring, he would typically sit in his office to review and analyze the reams of data that he had requested to work to identify issues within the organization. Although he was able to identify many issues early in his tenure in the leadership position, he could not implement most of these improvements, as he had failed to relate to the personnel under his supervision by insulating himself from them and their work. Furthermore, his ability to analyze management information would actually backfire when a decision was required. He would continue to ask for more and more information on the issue at hand instead of having the courage to make a choice when necessary, and, as a result, many of his decisions were either made too late to matter or were never made at all. This analytical ability and expertise in management techniques also affected his ability to lead, since he tried to make leadership a checklist process rather than focusing upon the people and their specific skills and needs. There were many instances in which my co-workers and I could actually see the boss’s thought processes as he tried to use every one of his management analysis techniques and attempt to fit them into the problem at hand to come up with a decision. He would work hard to see the problem, obtain all of the facts, discuss all conceivable courses of action with subordinates (over and over again in many instances), and work to try to gain consensus prior to his decision. He would finally decide upon a solution and work to implement the decision. Although the process sounded good, it resulted instead in significant problems within the organization because most people saw through this “cookie-cutter” approach to leadership that the boss used. People within the organization saw the boss fail to reach a timely decision, which led to the organization believing that the boss was indecisive and not sure what to do when problems occurred, which ultimately resulted in a loss of confidence in the boss by the majority of people in the organization. This use of good management techniques, but poor leadership and people skills, resulted in the boss failing to gain the trust or respect of the subordinates and the organization. This illustration highlights the need for good leaders to be good managers; however, a supervisor that effectively uses good management tools does not guarantee that good leadership will result within the organization.

The last difference between leadership and management that we will discuss involves the practice and application necessary for each area. Management is primarily based on defining roles and responsibilities, implementing processes, and analyzing measurement information to identify improvements and produce a better organization. This dependence of management on relatively concrete principles and practices results in objective procedures and data that can be directly used to implement effective management practices through the application of scientific guidelines and organizational principles. This is not the case with leadership. Leadership is a much more subjective talent, and can be difficult to break down and define exactly what traits will guarantee success. Simply put, management is more of a science and leadership is more of an art, which makes leadership impossible to practice through a checklist or cookie-cutter approach.

Over the next sections, we will look at both leadership and management and discuss some techniques and traits to assist you in improving in both areas.

1.2. Leadership Techniques and Traits

My experience has shown that we learn more leadership lessons from poor leaders and supervisors then we ever learn from good ones. That is because it is easy to see the resulting problems that occur from a poor decision or from inaction than to see the results of good leadership that result in the right decisions. In many cases, good organizations with good leaders just seem to work well, and it can be difficult to identify exactly what makes these teams work so well.

As is the case with most people, I’ve worked for good bosses and bad ones (although it sometimes seems that the poor bosses and supervisors have vastly outnumbered the good). With the bad bosses and leaders, many of the poor decisions were immediately apparent, since they resulted in some type of negative result shortly after the decision; this result could have been a decrease in efficiency, failure to achieve an objective, loss of confidence by employees or supervisors, or a loss of morale within the workforce. Although bad leadership can be painful to experience and to live through firsthand, many of these poor decisions and bad leadership examples can provide lessons for those wishing to improve their own leadership techniques. It would be nice to be able to work from the good examples; however, it has been my experience that it is much more difficult to determine what a good boss is doing and learn from that individual, because in most of these instances the organization simply seems to run well and work in an efficient and effective manner. How to identify a smooth operation and how it is being accomplished will not be as readily apparent to most observers without a good deal of study and analysis, so unfortunately it can be easier to learn from the bad leaders and their mistakes, since most everyone can identify what went wrong.

Another reason to work at improving your leadership skills is that the effect of poor leadership on an organization can make an immediate impact but take a very long time to fix. An unfortunate truth is that a bad leader can have an impact on an organization almost immediately through poor decisions and loss of morale among subordinates. All this will bring down the team’s effectiveness in a very short time, and it will take a much longer period of time to fix these issues than it took to create them. This makes it critical to provide the best leadership possible within an organization. Although leadership is an art that can be extremely difficult to accomplish well, we will look at some consistent traits that great leaders follow, so that all of us can keep them in mind in order to improve our own leadership skills.

1.2.1. Be Yourself

The first trait that all great leaders have is that they are true to themselves and do not put on an act in order to lead. This is critical for an effective leader, as one of the major problems with poor bosses is that they are often perceived as a “phonies.”” People will quickly see through any kind of act, and it will become more and more difficult for leaders to “talk the talk” when it is evident that they do not “walk the walk”” and match the personas that they are trying to put forth. A good example of a leader who does not put on an act and continues to ensure that he is true to his own character is Pope Francis, the former Cardinal from Argentina and current leader of the Catholic Church. Prior to becoming Pope, the Cardinal drove his own vehicle to work and lived a very modest and frugal life. After his elevation to Pope, it would have been simple to get caught up in the trappings of the Papal office; however, since his selection, Pope Francis has continued to try to maintain a simple and modest lifestyle. Even as the head of all Catholics and one of the most powerful heads of state in the world; Pope Francis continues to keep his own calendar, he maintains a modest living area within the Vatican, and he continues to try to maintain contact with the poor and less fortunate. All of these acts are what he typically did while still a Cardinal, and his work to maintain these actions have resulted in near-universal acclaim for his work in leading the Catholic Church and have earned him the moniker of “the “people’s pope.”

1.2.2. Have Empathy

I have always been surprised that empathy is normally not included in many lists of leadership traits. I believe that this is an error, and it is my opinion that this trait is one of the most important for good leaders. Empathy not only enables leaders to relate to their subordinates and establish better ties with the people who are doing the real work, but it also provides a significant ability to develop understanding with subordinates, which will ultimately lead to better decision making.

The unfortunate fact is that many leaders do not practice this trait. How many people have seen peers be promoted to management positions and, once there, appear to have lost all memory of what the main issues or problems were while they were working at the lower levels? One of the biggest jobs that leaders have is to make their subordinates’ jobs easier; by doing so, employees will see that their bosses care for them and their well-being, and will in turn work much harder and more effectively toward making the company’s business goals and objectives much more achievable. When people have been promoted up through the ranks, they have unique perspectives from which to better understand the issues and concerns of their subordinates; unfortunately, in many cases, newly promoted supervisors do not focus on this advantage but instead try to distance themselves from the very people who accomplish the real work within the organization. The leaders forget about these issues and concerns of their employees and do not attempt to solve them. There may be several reasons for this; new leaders may feel that they should distance themselves from the lower level from which they came in order to attempt to show their bosses that they can now think like senior management (or what they believe senior management should think like), or perhaps they wish to show senior management that their promotion was not a mistake. Whatever the reason, these newly promoted supervisors should work hard to remember what it was like in the lower positions, since it gives them empathy, which in turn will show concern for and gain greater effort from their employees.

Although it may be easier for individuals who have moved up through the ranks to empathize with their subordinates, all supervisors can gain empathy and understanding with their employees by using the tried-and-true technique of “management by walking around”(MBWA). Although the term was made popular by both Hewlett–Packard management in the 1970s and by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. in their book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies in 1982, the practice of checking on employees and operations on your own has been used by successful managers for a much longer period of time [3]. It is vital for all supervisors who want to be effective to get out from behind their desks and see with their own eyes what is actually going on. The advantages of moving out into the work areas and t...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• 1. Leadership and Management
• Part 1. Security Planning Considerations
• Part 2. Security Program Areas
• Part 3. Emergency Response and Training
• Index