The Great Conversation

Saving Our Children from the Presumption of College

In 2022, 39% of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in college or graduate school.

The total cost of attendance for a four-year degree includes tuition and fees, room and board, books, supplies, and other expenses. In 2022-2023, the average annual cost of attendance for first-time, full-time undergraduate students was: 

• Private nonprofit institutions: $58,600+

• Private for-profit institutions: $33,600+

• Public institutions: $27,100+

Most students borrow money to attend college, with the average federal student loan debt being $37,850. The standard repayment plan for federal student loans lasts 10 years, but the average student borrower spends closer to 20 years paying off their loans. 

The median annual salary for a college graduate with a bachelor's degree is around $77,636.. (after 4 years and an average debt of $38K)

This is the context for a discussion with a retired tradesman, Dennis Hamon. Dennis successfully sold his plumbing business a few years back and since that time has been serving his industry through the Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, Contractors Association. (PHCC).

He himself was that 18 year old kid who was always dreaming and always learning, but was not attracted to formal education. He was one of the 61% who did not go to college.

Instead he was mentored and apprenticed by tradespeople that helped shape his character and work ethic. And it eventually led him to building a successful practice.

Now he has a podcast, “Dennis the Apprentice” that is intended to be one of the vehicles that allows him to keep investing in the next generation of plumbers. He is also on the board of directors of the national PHCC and is helping shape the growth trajectory of the PHCC Academy, a comprehensive contractor life cycle education model beginning with workforce development.

Through the great conversation, he helps us understand the risks and opportunities in the plumbing industry. These will serve the next generation of plumbers represented by those 18 year old kids who have been taught to believe the only way to a quality life, a $100,000 annual salary and professional career development is through a 4 year degree.

If you love to learn, are accountable, love to help people, and fix problems that are important to them, then this might be the profession for you. And you get paid to learn it with many companies offering compensation based on your performance.

Plumbing services professionals are the doctors of the home. Educated, certified, professionally licensed, and well compensated. And they don’t spend 4 years to get a $50,000 job with a $50,000 debt hanging over them.

Enjoy this discussion with a great entrepreneur, and statesman.

The Gentle Art of Navigating Risk and Opportunity

Your team is in the room. It is a strategic moment. High risk, high reward. And you are the team leader. How do you help them navigate this moment of risk and opportunity?

This is happening in board rooms, executive management team meetings, and in organizational teams throughout your company. Do you have the language, processes, and tools embedded in your people so they can meet the moment that matters?

A different mindset is needed. One you vet for before hiring. One you ensure is part of the onboarding process. One that is persistently refreshed and used.

In this Great Conversation, we tease out whether Dr. Gav Schneider might have the recipe for this and whether it can break out from being a “security” program and into the mainstream toolbox for leaders up and down the corporate ladder. It is called “Presilience”.

Enjoy another Great Conversation on the future of work.

Why No Demand for Your Products and Services?

We had a great conversation with the Founder and CEO of The Demand Creation Institute, Sean Stormes.

Sean had the good fortune of leading a Continuous Quality Improvement initiative within a Fortune 500 company. This led him to the world’s authority Dr. William Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement. Deming was credited with revolutionizing Post World War II Japan’s manufacturing industry and making Japan one of the most dominant economies in the world.  In 1951 the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers established The Deming Prize that recognizes organizations that have implemented systems that promote quality, and individuals who have made contributions to quality. It is one of the highest awards int the world and the longest running national quality award.

This formative experience led Sean to explore the world of variation, a symptom that eventually leads to defects. Once he began researching, he saw variation at every level of a company.  

He saw variation in the articulation of purpose.

He saw variation in the articulation of value to the client.

He saw variation in the alignment of purpose, quality, and value throughout the company culture.

To add fuel to the fire, he also saw an epidemic of sameness. He could take any number of company websites in any market and see no substantial differences.

Finally, he saw that the measures of sales performance lacked the means to create a compounding effect, limiting the scale and impact of the company.

Sean’s passion for excellence in demand creation creates the context for all of this.

Enjoy this great conversation and then begin to question all the elements that add up to creating more from your go-to-market efforts.

A Story Can Save You and Your Company

I have seen it before. So have you. A disconnect:

• with your people

• with your stakeholders in your market

• with your prospects and customers

• with your board

And most important of all, you have compartments within you that are silos of excellence but are not integrated into a highly compelling story of you.

We invited Chris Hare, the Founder and Principal of The Storied Future, to our Podcast to discuss his journey in creating a story for himself, his company, and those he serves.

This portion of his quote next to his picture, above, grabbed me:

“I have the privilege of working with values-driven C-Suite leaders who have the audacity to believe they can bend the future to their will.”

We discuss what “values-driven” means as well as “bend the future to their will”, and why they are both key in creating a storied future personally and professionally.

Chris is highly transparent. It is because of the psychic pain he experienced that he was able to use this as a powerful transformational tool for others.

As the founder of The Sage Group, a value transformation firm, I know how powerful “story” is in building a successful company. This is more than marketing. This is an existential and strategic tool for those that dare to think they can change the world.

Enjoy this Great Conversation.

Ron Worman, The Sage Group

Access is Leverage

Markets are ecosystems. They are unique to geographies, economies, and weather (seasons of change).

Market participants later find they need to be represented as a single voice in representing their needs to the government or to coalesce around industry standards to uplift the quality of their industry.

For example, the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) was born in 1955. The original members were meeting to share information with each other and to adapt the security regulations that were coming out of the Department of Defense. Many had come to their security positions from the FBI, which was frequently asked after the war to perform security surveys of industrial sites.

Just as ASIS was launched to represent positional security authority within organizations, the Security Industry Association (SIA) founded in 1969 as a trade association representing global security solutions providers, including manufacturers, service providers, and integrators of electronic and physical security equipment.

Two associations representing two different groups within a common ecosystem.

Many more associations have been introduced within this market representing different interests and groups.

Interesting enough, no one as yet connected the vital information from each source into a single syndicated channel.

We talked with Michael Gips, JD, CPP, CSyP, CAE, the President of the recently reimagined Life Safety Alliance (LSA). He has served as both the Chief Security Officer and Chief Global Knowledge and Learning Officer for ASIS International, where he oversaw Learning, Content, Certification, Standards & Guidelines, Production, Enterprise Security Risk Management, and other departments. He developed the CSO Roundtable, an organization that includes hundreds of the most senior security executives at the biggest corporations around the world, as a membership group within ASIS. He also served as editor and publisher of Security Management, where he authored hundreds of articles. Mike is also a senior advisor for Cardinal Point Strategies, a senior advisor for the Network Contagion Research Institute, and a Partner in the Knowledgebase of Insider Threats. He also serves on the advisory boards of several organizations that provide technology and services in government security, executive protection, violence prevention, and emergency geolocation.

A highly networked, highly knowledgeable, and highly generous man.

As you listen to the conversation, you will see the hub of syndicated information he is attempting to aggregate, organize, and distribute as well as his vision for connecting the authors of the content with the moments that matter in the security market. If achieved this will be not only a content aggregator, but also a relationship generator which is the foundation of industry innovation and change. For those who join in this ground floor opportunity, it may represent a unique reciprocal opportunity to be at the table as a new syndication of relationship and content emerge.

Enjoy the conversation.

The Business of Before

In the security industry, the ideal posture is to be proactive. To do this, requires a relationship with people, processes, tools, and the core values of the client.

And ideally, the client is now able to identify risk, analyze and assess that risk, and then mitigate the risk down to an acceptable level. 

If this is true, how do you assess the methodology and the core values of a vendor before they take on this central and significant task?

We have a discussion with the co-founder of TorchStone Global, David Niccolini. David discusses the "Business of Before" in the context of their code of ethics. You can see why the company has won numerous awards and the respect of key industry insiders. 

As a reference, the key elements of this code are:

Above All, Do No Harm

We endeavor to do no harm, and we actively work to do good. That statement might seem trite to some, but to those associated with TorchStone, we mean it sincerely. We try hard to form relationships of trust with the people with whom we work. We do all we can to develop and maintain that trust, to uphold professional standards, and to take full responsibility for our actions.

Gut Check

We refuse engagements or recuse ourselves from situations that do not pass these simple gut check questions: 1) Is this going to cause harm to someone or something? 2) Is this activity lawful? 3) Would I be comfortable if this work was made public? We expect and demand that employees and associates will consult with TorchStone leadership immediately if something seems amiss with any relationship or project.

We Honor the Dignity and Worth of All People

We deeply believe in the dignity and worth of all people. We treat others with respect, and we do not tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind. TorchStone will NOT assist in any investigation or provide any services (paid or pro bono) that may have been requested with the intent to kill, injure, suppress, stalk, or harass an individual or group. TorchStone will NOT conduct any operations or provide any services that violate others’ rights or any fundamental freedoms. TorchStone will NOT use deception, coercion, or threats to obtain information or provide services. This reinforces that above all, we at TorchStone strive to do no harm.

We Follow Laws and Regulations, and Foster Ethical Relationships

We respect the laws and regulations wherever we do business around the world. TorchStone assesses and mitigates the risk of potential physical, cyber, and reputational threats through lawful open-source information collection, principled executive protection, and sound security consulting. We do not take on any work that may infringe upon another person’s or group’s fundamental rights. We are honest and transparent in our discussions with employees, partners, and clients about what we can and cannot do. We build positive relationships free from corruption, bribes, kickbacks, or any other unethical activity. If potential conflicts of interest arise, financial or otherwise, we immediately consult with all parties involved, both internal and external, to transparently discuss the situation and to identify, together, the best way forward.

We Welcome Diversity

TorchStone is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer for all qualified candidates. We welcome and support people from diverse backgrounds and experiences. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

We Play Nice in the Sandbox

We respect our competitors. While we are focused on growing our company, we want to do so in a way that reflects our values. We want to compete with our competitors fairly and honestly.

How Can We Be Better?

In order to improve, we need to know when we are falling short. TorchStone supports a culture of trust and encourages speaking-up when something is not right. We are all human. This means that not only are we fallible, but also, we have feelings. It does not feel good to tell someone when something is not working, nor does it feel good to receive that information. We recognize that speaking up in these situations takes courage, and listening takes humility. We value that courage and are committed to humbly listening to feedback (the good, the bad, and the ugly).

Enjoy the Conversation!

MIndStuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds (Your and others)

When you have conversations with others, are you trying to win? Trying to defend a position?

Then, perhaps, you might be stuck.

In this Great Conversation with social researcher and author Michael McQueen, we learn what is is to be Mind Stuck, and how we might discover a new way to see and be seen.

This impacts you personally, professionally, and, in the end, influences the course of our organizations and our world. 

The Greatest Threat to Humans: It is not AI

We create tools. The tools help us off load burdensome tasks as well as act as highly leveraged fulcrums to expand our energy and minds. These tools have helped us create. They have helped us build. They have helped us cure disease. They have helped us mitigate threats, from both human and animal.

And now we have artificial intelligence. However, many of the implementations are failing because we are deploying management and process thinking from the industrial age.. Ironically, in the era of the machine we have become one.

Our great conversation with Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a more Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, is enlightening as we pause to consider our next steps on our path to value; as individuals, businesses, and the world.

Accepting the Paradox of Leadership

We are all on the journey of becoming. And we hope and pray, that at the end of the journey we are whole. For all of us that means being loved for who we are. And to get there, we need to establish trust in ourselves and in others.

Trust. Could it be the foundation of everything we touch? Are we not all builders? And if so, wouldn’t we want to build all the relationships we have in this life on top of a platform of trust? And wouldn’t it make sense if that same platform that builds those relationships would be the fuel that drives innovation and change within the organizations we live and work in every day?

This is a great conversation that holds nothing back. This is not an easy fix; especially if you do not have a roadmap. This conversation is about that roadmap that will create the scaffolding that will help you build a beautiful business and a beautiful world.

Leadership Language

Words are an attempt to articulate reality. The reality that was yesterday. The reality that is today. And the reality that is tomorrow.

Words can be a weapon. They can bully, demonize, and destroy.

Words can embrace, energize, and elevate.

If these bookends are true, then what is the area in-between that seems to be moved by one or the other?

I have a great conversation with Chris Westfall, author of Leadership Language where we attempt to uncover the nuances of language that describe our internal journey as well as our impact on others. We learn that words matter. And our conscious use of them can help raise others up and moving in a positive direction. In the end, the observation and measurement of leadership is about how you show up and constructively influence those around you.

Chris urges us not to see leadership as conceptual. It is not an information exchange. It is not technique. It is about an understanding of oneself. And then authentically showing up for and with others.

The book is fast paced, pithy, and real. This great conversation may change what conversations you will have with yourself and others.

Enjoy.

Desperate for Impact

Lives of quiet desperation. We have been pulling on the quote from Thoreau for awhile in our great conversations. Our great conversation on the Future of Work with this dynamic and inspirational leader may provide you the nudge to seize this moment to recognize your impact on others and help create an engaged culture of impact and purpose with your team.

The Challenge of Industry: Creating a Bridge between Old and New

Whenever you attempt to capture knowledge it is useful to understand that it is a snapshot in time. Very little of what we learn will survive as true given the unique nature of change. However, it is a platform for growth as long as you have access to the real time experiences of change that are occurring. We explore this idea in this great conversation with a security consultant attempting to create a bridge between the rear view mirror and the road ahead. The conversation applies to any market anywhere. Enjoy the conversation. 

The Great5: The Language of Leadership

Imagine being tasked to develop a first class talent and organizational management platform for one of the most respected companies in the Fortune 100. A company with a vision, mission, values, and goals that is highly respected in the industry, with a CEO who looked to his leaders to articulate those things in a very specific way.

And now you have been with this company for 20 years. You have worked for 4 different CEOs and 5 different Human Resources executives. Everything has changed and nothing has changed. You still have a rapidly growing need for the best people, in the right seats, doing the right things.

It took a very special person to take on this challenge. One that had an academic background in Organizational Psychology, a consulting background in strategic change management, and a practical background as a global corporate executive.

The man is Allan Church, Ph.D. who is currently the Founder and Managing Partner of Maestro Consulting. I sat down with him and had a great conversation about the nature of leadership, talent management, and organizational change.

I was able to hear about the Great5, a program that was in response to his CEOs admonition that people remembered compelling slogans. It stood for the core dimensions used throughout all the work the company does when assessing and developing future leaders. The dimensions are imbedded in the Great5 competency framework articulating the top five competencies needed to go from being a good leader to a great leader. They are:

• Growth reflects a person's curiosity and ability to learn from novel situations by constantly pushing outside their comfort zone and helping others to learn and develop.

• Relationships involves building and maintaining trusting relationships across organizational boundaries by modeling integrity, transparency, and authenticity and being respectful and inclusive of others.

• Execution is the energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration an individual brings to motivate others to action and to accomplish ambitious goals, and it is simplifying complexity to drive quality results.

• Agility involves adapting a person's style and approach to an ever-changing business environment, managing pressure, and embracing and championing change to drive transformation.

• Thinking reflects how an employee brings in and uses external insights (business, customer or consumer, industry, global), thinks creatively, and takes a long-term and holistic perspective to make informed decisions.

And this was just one of the many innovations Allan was able to cultivate and lead.

We also had a great conversation around the measures that matter to the CEO and the executive team. One of the most compelling examples of this, is the incredible journeys of the leaders that went through the program resulting in 16 former executives becoming Fortune 500 CEOs.

The Path to Value™

What does it look like to create a path to value? What does that really mean?

I have been having great conversations for over 20 years that have informed my physical leadership events and my podcasts. I have pursued people who have ideas that might change their market and perhaps change their world. I have taken the position of learner within these conversations. I don’t interview, I consume.

It has been an incredible journey. The physical leadership events would average 150-350 attendees and, before the pandemic, were taking place across the United States. Then we pivoted to the podcast and have been recognized as being in one of the top 1% of podcasts today.

But I have never had someone ask about my role as founder of The Sage Group and author of our value transformation methodology called “The Path to Value”.

In this great conversation, I turn over the learning to Dr. Daniel Hallak, who connects human capital with strategy and execution to create organizational value. Daniel is one of my recent interviewees and based on his expertise, is highly interested in how The Sage Group extracts insights from our research to create a highly differentiated and strategic business plan that creates value for the owner and the stakeholders.

I must admit, I was a little bit nervous. My clients know I like to stay behind the scenes helping them create the strategy as well as execute it with and through their people.

Since we take a whole company approach, I shed light on the efforts to improve a company’s silos of excellence through subject matter experts without such a strategy. For those of you who focus primarily on those silos, this is not to dismiss you. It is simply that your subject matter expertise is best leveraged with an overall strategy in place.

For those who specialize in selling companies. This is not to dismiss you. You have your place and your value. But for my clients, by the time they get to such an event, the value has already been expressed, and the identification of the future buyer has been understood. We stay focused on the value that is realized and how it can be sustained through our people, processes, and tools within the new acquirer’s organization. People are too important to allow them to become mere expressions on a spreadsheet.

I urge you to hear me: This is my path. There are many paths to the mountaintop. This is the one I have chosen, and now am expressing through this great conversation.

Your path to value and your expression of success is one of the most important journeys you will ever be on. I am honored I have been able to walk your path to value with so many of you.

Burn Out or Burn In?

I would quickly describe “burn out” as exhaustion. But that is too simple. How did you become exhausted? It seems that there is this incredible stage we go through while heading toward exhaustion and part of it is being actively disengaged from our purpose and settling for a frantic and numbing execution of droll work.

Then what would be “Burn In”? It can mean a lot of things, but in this context I might leverage one: Burn-in can imply a lasting or permanent impression on someone or something. What could we “burn in” to prevent “burn out”?

There are some people who hit their bottom in life and rise out of it with a new-found perspective and purpose. Such was Sally Clarke, author, speaker, researcher, and, what she calls “Human Leader”.

Her two books, Protect Your Spark: How to Prevent Burnout and Live Authentically and Relight Your Spark: How to Heal and Evolve after Burnout, were inspired by her own journey.

When you speak with her you realize it all bubbles up to teaching people how to flourish, thereby making “burnout” redundant.

I walked away with a sense that work is a true blessing, and the art of work involves trust, purpose, and belonging.

Enjoy this Great Conversation as we connect between Seattle and Amsterdam on this podcast.

You are not Invisible

I was visiting a prospective client the other day. We went out to lunch at one of their favorite restaurants. The waitress came up to the table and, as always, I asked what her name was. She replied and I shared mine. I thanked her and asked about her day and then we continued the ritual of ordering our drinks and our meal. I did the same for the person who kept replenishing my water.

The prospective client later shared with my partner that the exchange felt “odd” to him and implied I might have been putting on some form of act for his benefit.

Isn’t that interesting?

I know what it feels like to be invisible. Do you? And do you strive to ensure you do your part to acknowledge those who cross your path if just for a moment? More importantly, those who interact with you, or serve you, or are in a professional relationship such as your co-workers and your employees?

This Great Conversation is about another form of being invisible. It touches many different people usually because of their skin color, their attire, their sexual orientation, their lifestyle…It is insidious because it is deeply rooted in how we were socialized from birth through our cultural stewards like educators, media, and ideological leaders.

The Invisible Generals, written by Doug Melville, is purportedly a story of rediscovering his family’s legacy. And that is true. It is an extraordinary story of his ancestors journey through a "Forest Gumpian" encounter with some of this nations most pivotal moments; from the Civil War, through WWI and WWII. We see his great, great, grandfather Louis, becoming the trusted servant of one of the Civil War’s most trustworthy generals who happens to be friends with Ulysses Grant and then find him holding Grant’s son on his lap as he heads to the White House. We see Louis’ son Ben Sr. (aka Ollie) being recommended to enter West Point, and being stalled by a later president buckling to the politics of the day. But, because of his performance and service with the Buffalo Soldiers, a term used by the native Indians who fought the segregated black soldiers in the American Indian Wars, the same president made him a commissioned officer.

We then hear about Ben Jr.’s path to West Point, and the grueling isolation of his time there. Later he would establish himself honorably in WWII. You might have heard of his exploits with the Tuskegee Airmen. The Airmen's success in escorting bombers during World War II – having one of the lowest loss records of all the escort fighter groups, and being in constant demand for their services by the allied bomber units.- is a record unmatched by any other fighter group.

Along the way we learn about a unique mindset that refused to be a victim of their circumstance. Refused to become an invisible statistic. We will “infuse the system to diffuse the system” was their motto. They saw themselves as free, independent people who wanted to live up to the American dream, rather then play down to the role of victim. Their actions became their testimony.

This Great Conversation inspired me. And because Doug Melville chose to share his lessons learned for all of us at the end of the book, it can become a primer for your own pursuit of resilience in the face of insurmountable odds, and the inevitable recognition that life can be very unfair. But for Doug and his ancestors, they are mere stones guiding you on your path to value.

The Holy Grail: Aligning Your Business to Your People

Love it or hate it, the term “Holy Grail” is often used in life and business to describe something that has always been unobtainable. The pursuit of the “unobtainable” takes patience and indomitable faith.

The pursuit of a leadership development program that can crack the code of an organization’s people, lifting them to a new level of engagement with the organization’s vision, mission, and purpose, feels unobtainable, especially given the millions of dollars invested and the meager measurable return on investment it has produced.

This Great Conversation with Dr. Daniel Hallak of WiLD Leaders, gave me hope in this “impossible” dream. Perhaps it will for you too.

Learning, Seeing, and theThree Turns of a Leader

Who am I?

We answer this question through different stages of our lives. And much of our life is in the business world. It is natural, therefore, that a great deal of our quest becomes learning a craft. And this is where many of us remain the rest of our working lives. This is not a bad thing. The best in us dive deep into this pool of knowledge and are found to be valuable in life and business as a result.

Some of us make a turn. We become leaders of the craftspeople. If we are good at this craft, we learn to go deep into each of our craftspeople leveraging them to create organizational outcomes that matter. We become, over time, maestros.

If we have a long tenure as an organizational leader, we might find ourselves in a third turn. One that leverages all our gifts, our wisdom and our ability to opportunistically see the future, before the future throws us a curveball.

These three turns become the subject of a Great Conversation with Dr. Mark L. Vincent. Mark has spent a large part of his career as an Executive Advisor and Process Consultant walking alongside accomplished executives in the third turn of their careers,

Mark has founded Maestro-level leaders, Design Group International, and the Society for Process Consulting, authored numerous books, including the most recent, Listening Helping Learning, and contributes original content through a variety of channels. Most recently he was involved in the launch of Mygrow North America, an application for growing emotional intelligence in individuals and organizations.

His white paper called: The Three Turns of an Executive Leader was what prompted me to call him to have a great conversation. He is working on turning the invaluable content in this paper into a book.

Whatever turn you are currently in, you will find Mark’s ideas compelling and useful as you become a hero in your own journey.

 

Who Dares Shares

“Who dares wins” is a motto made popular in the English-speaking world by the British Special Air Service.

The motto has also been used by twelve elite special forces units around the world that in some way have historical ties to the British SAS.

But the title of this blog and this Great Conversation is different. It is used as a tag line by our guest after every one of his posts on LinkedIn and in his new book. He would say, we win when we no longer fear to tell the truth.

The author I speak with in this Great Conversation, Robin Horsfall, was a boy soldier at fifteen, a paratrooper at seventeen and an SAS soldier at twenty-one. He fought in five wars as a front-line soldier, was a Royal Marine Sniper and a top bodyguard. He was also one of the UK’s first Paramedics and ran clinics all over the world. He once built a medical center in the middle of the Guyana Jungle, but there is more.

Robin has been in front of the events leading up to the Ukrainian conflict and writing about it. At one point he had close to 1,500,000 people following his every word. And he has ended every one of his blogs with the phrase: “Who dares shares”.

In the age of polarized social and political voices attempting to cancel one another, Robin is truly daring to get the truth out about this conflict that impacts the future of western democracies and values.

After a time, he was asked to compile his journey into a book. It is called Slava Ukraini! Who Dares Shares.

I continue to read Robin’s posts on LinkedIn that now transcend the Ukranian conflict. He truly desires a world that is free, but as a warrior he understands the need for good to stand against bad.

Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine!) Who Dares Shares. Another Great Conversation.

The - Between -

“It is said that what matters most is not your date of birth or your date of death but the hyphen that signifies the life that is between the two. We live in the - Between - a mysterious place to be, full of grace and surprise and unknowns.”

So goes the introduction to Love Songs from the - Between -; a daily journal through the year that helps you see the road; what is behind, what is ahead, and what is in front of you as you step through life. It is a great way to start or end your day. I have taken nuggets from each day and applied them to my walk. Such as this one from today, October 10, 2023:

“May you be ever-curious,
a master of great questions,
an explorer of great universes-
not just a sightseer
dashing from one marvel to the next
but a deep sea diver
exhuming treasures hidden
uncovering gems long lost,
not just a tourist
skimming the readily accessible
but a deep-space pioneer
discovering stars hitherto unknown.”

Join me as I sit by a virtual and imagined fire with a taste of something, something, by my side, and reconnect with an old friend, Benjamin Martin in a great conversation. We traveled through Europe together as young men and aspiring authors; and I had a front row seat listening to the kind of songs that you will find in his new book.

Profile: Benjamin was a technology executive for over 35 years. He now serves as the Board Chairperson for the Celebrant Foundation and Institute and teaches courses in funeral celebrancy. He also is a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant specializing in life celebrations, weddings, and milestone moments. He continues to add to his published works that include Prayers on the Road Home and Masters of Change.

Water of Life

“Serve Honorably. Drink Honorably™”

Inspired by a previous Great Conversation with author Michael Trott (The Art of Protecting the Leader), we caught up with his latest venture: Four Branches Bourbon. Imagine the heart, mind, and fortitude in launching a new company, and a new bourbon. It would take a Hall of Fame effort and Hall of Fame help to do it. We have a great conversation with the men representing the four branches of the military, the four grains of their unique mash, and four hearts who continue to want to serve. “Serve Honorably. Drink Honorably™"

Well done Rick Franco, U.S. Marines, Michael Trout, U.S. Airforce; Robert Casey, U.S. Army; and Harold Underdown, U.S. Navy.

Yes’s are Good. No’s are Good. Maybe’s will Kill You!

You can learn a lot about life by studying how you and others make decisions. If you think about it, our life is a series of transactions of value. In a transaction, there is the possibility of a yes, a no, and the ever so dangerous maybe. Why dangerous? Because a “maybe” can indicate a problem with your criteria for value. It can speak to a lack of readiness. It can indict you for your lack of courage or confidence. Whether you are a “buyer” or a “seller” in your life’s transactions, pay attention to the process by which you engage your world. In this second great conversation with the CEO of a Sales Training Company called M3, we get more insights into the psychology of a true profession called “sales”. Listen then tie it into your  own life.

Hungry for Service

We are largely motivated by self-interest. If we are acting as a buyer, we want the best product at the lowest price. But we also know that lowest price may not be the answer to our needs. If we are acting as a seller, we may be motivated to “win”. But how do we define this term? Now let’s pull back and see if there is a connection between these two notions and the behaviors of the buyer and seller. There is a beautiful ending to this story… listen and see if you can find it!

 

The Manifesto: A Declaration of Whole Leadership

In our Great Conversation Podcast, we begin with a statement:

“Welcome to The Great Conversation where Ideas Matter.
Ideas shape markets.
Ideas can change the world.”

I originally decided to open with this to reinforce my passion for pursuing people and ideas that ultimately impact our lives.

But hidden in this opening is another premise: that a leader is needed to activate the idea.

A leader is someone who determines that an idea does matter and intentionally helps to activate the idea in the world through their interaction with others.

In this sense, the idea becomes a “manifesto”; a declaration of their intent so that others can rally around it, feed it, nurture it, and “manifest” it into the world.

There is another hidden premise in this opening: that all humans have agency, i.e., that no matter how difficult and narrow our choices are, we are the final arbiter of our experience on this planet. We can choose our mindset. Some choose to follow an idea. They are the “crazy ones” because they think that it is possible to leave a mark on this world.

I am fascinated by these people who issued their own versions of a manifesto upon this world such as:

• John F. Kennedy’s moonshot speech, declaring that we will reach the moon and return.

• Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech declaring an identity intrinsic to every man has been denied to the black man.

• The Declaration of Independence that expressed this so eloquently:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Unalienable (translated today as inalienable) means that something is intrinsic, it cannot be separated, it cannot be taken or given away.

And now another manifesto is needed. In an era where we have been taught to look at leadership as the secret of a few, we must change our thinking. The “unalienable” notion that every human can intentionally lead their lives and travel the journey to wholeness upends the notion that it is a degree in school, a royal birthright, or a corporate program.

I pursued a great conversation with Dr. Rob McKenna, the founder, and CEO of Wild Leaders. Dr. McKenna is one of the top industrial-organizational psychologists in the country.  He is the founder and CEO of WiLD Leaders, and created the WiLD Toolkit, a leader development process and set of tools.  He served as the Chair of the Department of Industrial Organizational Psychology at Seattle Pacific University.

He is the author of several books, including Dying to Lead: Sacrificial Leadership in a Self-Centered World.  His most recent book, Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure, focuses on strategies leaders can use to stay true to themselves and connected when it matters most.

He is currently working on another manuscript which, at times, becomes a part of our conversation.

Dr. McKenna has lit my fuse. What an audacious idea! That I might be able to intentionally lead a whole and meaningful life and help others along the way. What an audacious idea that organizations can invest in the development of their people and enjoy a more meaningful definition of success.

In an era where most people live lives of quiet desperation, this is a conversation we need to have.

The Future of Security is the Future of Business

Mark Ledlow is the Founder and CEO of Ledlow Security Group, that provides Physical Security, Site Security, Supply Chain Security, Disaster Response Teams, Executive Protection for High Networth Families and Executives. General Counsel support, and Risk Management

He also founded the Fearless Mindset Podcast, His goal is to find captivating stories of leadership, courage, market leadership, and insights across all markets, but particularly security.

He tracked me down to have a “Great Conversation” excavating my learnings from my strategic consulting practice and one of the market sectors I spent much of my time in attempting to direct it to a higher ceiling of value.

After 22 years, the security industry is still attempting to create alignment with the businesses they serve. Much of the struggle can be traced back to the orientation they received from their previous careers in intelligence, military, agency, and law enforcement. Mark and I attempt to explore this orientation as well as the impact of the digital transformation of business on the next generation of security practitioners.

Mark invited me on his podcast, and I republish it here so that many who missed it can review it at their leisure.

Another Great Conversation with a Great steward in Mark Ledlow.

What does it mean to be a Time Traveler?

Humans created constructs that represent time. Consider it the canvas in which they have painted their origin stories as well as their stories of the future. As this pendulum swings, we also are exploring the depths of our understanding of the who and why of our being. We believe “truth” is in the data. But then the data changes. We need someone to help us understand the reader (us), and the story they are living. Within this story lies the secret of navigating the risks and opportunities that represent the human experience. Enjoy this Great Conversation with the time-traveler Cyndi Coon. Be prepared. You may become a fellow time-traveler.

Sacrificial Leaders Galvanize an Industry Supporting Children and Families

Many executives are asked by their boards to retain the services of a professional risk, resilience, and security firm that specializes in executive protection. The best ones find a way to become a part of the value proposition of the executive’s personal and professional space. Many do this by integrating their staff and expertise with the executive’s administrative and travel staff. The ultimate goal is to naturally embed the protective mindset within the organization and the executive.

The alternative has been a pet peeve of mine since I began to service this community 21 years ago. Security is not overhead. It is essential to the fabric of the organization. It supports how people, perform roles, in a measurable process, using the tools the organization can provide with the express purpose to create organizational outcomes that create strategic value. If that process is constrained or disrupted by risk, the cascading erosion of value can occur with lightning speed. And velocity and efficacy are elemental to personal and professional value.

I start with this as a primer to a conversation I had with the founders and operators of NannyGuards, a division of LeMareschal. Denida Grow saw the value in personal childcare (like the administrative assistants of executives), but a gap between the caregiver and the child’s security created unnecessary risk. She responded by creating Nanny Guards.

NannyGuards are nannies/mannies who have all the skills, posture, and attitude of any caregiver that looks after children. The training they receive prepares them to meet unexpected risks that could cause harm to the child in their care.

They engage their client with the same professional approach to risk management as executive protection by assessing the needs of the client (business) and then the risks.

Then they build processes and procedures around emergency management, disaster preparedness, route management and identification of risky offenders near to their routes and schools.

We have a great conversation around this unique business model. And then we have the opportunity to witness the hearts of Chris and Denida Grow. They wanted their business to contribute to their industry with and through the sponsorship of the International Protective Security Board (IPSB), many other corporate sponsors, and a globally recognized children’s research organization that would allow the servant leaders in their industry to unite together and generously give their expertise and wealth to serve the greater good of the community.

They announced BodyGuards for Kids, a virtual online learning event on March 18-19, 2023 featuring top subject matter experts donating their time and expertise to sharing research and skills needed to protect human and material assets around the world. Every one of the speakers is donating their time and knowledge free of charge. The entrance fees, the corporate gifts, and the sponsorship revenue is 100% donated to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude is not only known for its acclaimed research, but also its fully paid child and family care. It applies 82% of all monies collected to its mission one of the top-rated non-profits in the world.

I can see all elements of the security ecosystem pitching in at some level to this wonderful cause. Consultants, service providers, manufacturers, integrators, and chief security officers and their teams. This podcast is for you. If we had100 companies give $1,000 or more, and 200 executives give $50 or more, we could all send St. Jude a gift of immeasurable value from an industry that is known as stewards of care around the world.

Thank you Chris and Denida for a Great Conversation.

 

 

 

 

Augmenting the Machine: AI and the Future of Work

What is the future of human and machine?

We all know. We sense it. We are on the edge of something that will reset the economy. Reset how we work and play. Reset our notion of what is true

And the center of it all is the emerging cognitive capability of the machine (Artificial Intelligence - AI). And its ability to leverage the sensors (just like a human) that allows it to see, hear, touch, read and understand.

The media is teaching us how to fear it. This is nothing new. We have been fearing every tool the species has created for thousands of years. We have a hard time grasping the notion that everything is changing, and we must adapt or die.

So I will be chasing down the ones on the frontline, fearless in their experimentation, challenging the notion of measuring twice, cutting once. Ideas fail when we fear failure. Get it done, get it out, and see what happens.

One such person is Kirill Zubovsky, the founder of a new AI application called SmartyNames. He is a peripatetic gig worker. He is running around the country in a Sprinter Van with two children and his wife. Along the way, he took the generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, and used it to streamline his experience in searching for domain names. We, the entrepreneurs of the world, have had the frustrating experience of looking for a domain name for our business. We think of one, then input it into a search engine hoping we somehow can own it. After going back and forth forever, and then, once found, purchasing it, we then have to develop a logo, a website, content, newsletters, etc.

Kirill just wanted to get the job done and launch. He used the AI app and his coding to streamline the process, or as Drucker would say, the job to be done. Classic ideation leading to innovation and finally to activation.

We have a great conversation that ended up covering everything from the emerging app stores for AI innovators to the innovation process itself. What I come away with is the idea that we can take the current state of the machine and augment it, making it our helper, extending the reach of our creativity and time. Like any tool, it is agnostic. Now it needs people who care deeply about improving our lives to harness it and release it into the world. Like any tool, it will displace old notions of what is true, what is fast, what is good, what is valuable.

Enjoy this great conversation.

The Power of Business=The Power of Diversity. The Power of Equity. And the Power of Inclusion

The care and feeding of a company creates a highly leveraged vehicle to optimize its path to value: personally, professionally, and within the context of a team known as a business. Great leaders know how to leverage different points of view that originate from disparate cultural backgrounds. This strengthens the vision, mission, and execution. We explore the terms diversity, equity, and inclusion and the power of the perceived other in a great conversation with Dr. Jade Singleton of The Sarah Jane Academy.

Time Held Me Green and Dying, Though I Sang in My Chains Like the Sea

Dylan Thomas's famous poem, Fern Hill, is based on his childhood experiences on a farm in Wales. The poem is a celebration of the wonder, magic, and joy of this world that many of us experienced and have a hard time remembering as we grow older.

This conversation is about that young child growing older and continuing to see life through his once-child's eyes. The Editor in Chief of Centennial Media, Michelle Stacey, shares her story of helping her Father die while he sings in his chains like the sea. 

Sourcing Intelligence to Navigate Risk and Opportunity

If you were entering a new market in a foreign country, where do you acquire the boots on the ground intelligence to navigate your risks and opportunities?

And how would you consume the information quickly enough to make an impact on your strategies and plans?

We reached out to a CEO who has created a company that provides this intelligence for Latin America. And, serendipitously, he had just posted a blog that provided a visual map of the political ideologies of each country. The post struck a nerve and at the time of this writing had over 5 million views.

Yes, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, which provides political risk analysis and bespoke investigations in emerging markets, as well as the author of the Latin America Risk Report, a weekly newsletter. For two decades, Bosworth has written about politics, economics, security and technology in emerging markets, primarily Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, since 2004, Bosworth has been the author of ‘Bloggings by Boz’, where he provides analysis and commentary on Latin American politics and US foreign policy.

Single Source of Truth: In Security, in Business, and in Life

“It is hard to breathe, and my heart is palpitating like a drum. I am feeling weak – I want to lie on the ground so the world stops spinning for a minute and I can catch my breath.

A thousand thoughts cross my mind. What if this goes wrong? What if I can’t deliver that? What if I can no longer support my family and be there for them? What kind of example will I be to my children? I have everything I thought I wanted, but I am still not happy.”

This comes from the prologue of How to Beat Burnout with Gratitude by Marcelo Carvalho, Vice President of Cybersecurity, Capital One ·

The book was written from Marcelo’s experience in life and business. We have a great conversation with the book in mind by starting with his career at GE where he worked closely to embed a single source of truth cybersecurity architecture into the core methodology of a critical product manufacturing practice. Through this conversation we explore how he did that and find organizational change and transformation theory come to life. Security becomes part of an empowered culture and as well as the engineering process.

Then we turn from this business integration into another way of looking at a single source of truth to guide us personally and professionally. Through this leader’s transparent sharing of his own experience, we find ourselves on our own path to value.

The New Value Proposition of Policing

As a strategic advisor to CEOs, helping to create the story that drives their organization and helping them achieve the promise of that story, I created The Path to Value. It was my way of learning. It was my way of teaching. And learning. And teaching.

I have been able to see and feel first-hand, the attempt of leaders with a background in law enforcement, military, and agency, to become strategic advisors to the business. The best ones attempt to learn the language of the operational leaders of the business. They listen to the value proposition these leaders make for their contribution to the whole business. This informs and infuses their work. In many cases, it changes how they approach their profession.

Law enforcement has been through a roller coaster over the years. Its leaders and officers are being confronted with a new generation and new rules that are challenging their morale and their work. I found one leader who seems energized by this time and place. He is learning the value proposition of his “customer” and leveraging them to create a force multiplier in risk management.

His name is Mike Zegadlo. He is Chief of Police at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois. He was an educator and trainer before entering law enforcement. He has leveraged this to create relationships in the community and at the school that is changing the perception of law enforcement. It also is elevating their value.

We have a great conversation around the people, process, and tools he is leveraging to bring the art and practice of policing to the next level.

The Future belongs to the Data Driven Organization

We are data driven. As leaders, we need the right data to make effective decisions. But most of the data that is provided to us only shows what happened. We are making decisions based by staring in a rear-view mirror.

But what if we could forecast the future? What if the data we have collected can be leveraged to provide us scenarios that will provide us a glimpse into the impact our decisions would have on the future of our organizations.

Most of the assumptions we make are based on an incomplete picture.

As we have said in past conversations, CEOs are paid to navigate risk and opportunity. How do I understand all the variables in my future decision making? Do I put my finger in the air and make a choice anyway?!

There are many tools that can help you organize and understand the risk models in your plan. 80-90% of the variables in your decision making can be captured. You can use computing power to go through them, check on the integrity of the numbers, sensitivities, scenario waterfalls that go beyond the numbers. The goal is to understand what the data is telling you before the future happens.

Most C-Level executives have people who run the numbers and the variables. They are often called analysts. They create the frameworks or models for the executives who don’t want to see the data engine and tool, (the single source of truth) but see the data take shape so a decision can be made.

The model architecture can than display functional context so executives can see how the data uniquely applies to them, and they can change data that is unique to them. But each contextualized input than impacts the whole picture. Executive teams who have this ability have the opportunity to see a clearer picture of how the sum of the parts impacts the whole.

In this conversation we go through this and then I ask the data strategist to apply the concept to the Chief Security Officer who is attempting to embed themselves in the contextualized risk and opportunity of the C-Suite. We have a great conversation about a big idea. Can we turn this technology approach into a qualitative tool to manage risk, resilience, security, and the opportunities that can be leveraged from a wholistic view of risk.

Gianluca Bisceglie is the Founder & CEO at Visyond Technologist. He also is a strategist, private equity executive, and entrepreneur with broad international experience across both mature and emerging markets.

Visyond is a cloud-native enterprise SaaS company that transforms spreadsheets into decision-making platforms to drive performance.

Prior to founding Visyond, he worked in Private Equity in the Middle East and in Russia, responsible for the identification, screening, due diligence, and execution of investment opportunities in various industries.

He is a regular guest speaker and a mentor at various universities and accelerators.

Gianluca holds an MBA with Distinction from London Business School and an MEng in Electronics Engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy).

The Stories that Influence Leaders

History can teach us a lot about the repercussions of change. The impact of change is accelerated by the confluence of events, crisis upon crisis.

Imagine if you were able to imagine it before it happened thereby providing the white space to adapt and innovate mitigating the impact of the change.

This is how this great conversation begins with an author that leverages research of our world and imagines scenarios that government and private sector leaders must see to help us all. Rather than a white paper, his “useful fiction” captures the interest and then the mind of the leader.

Peter Warren Singer is Strategist at New America, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and Founder & Managing Partner at Useful Fiction LLC.

A New York Times Bestselling author, described in the Wall Street Journal as “the premier futurist in the national-security environment” and “all-around smart guy” in the Washington Post, he has been named by the Smithsonian as one of the nation’s 100 leading innovators, by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues, by Foreign Policy to their Top 100 Global Thinkers List, and as an official “Mad Scientist” for the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.

Learning the Art of Credibility

If you were known to be trustworthy. If you engendered trust from others, how would it change your life and your world?

Our great conversation with a global credibility expert, Mitchell Levy, is really about saving our humanity and changing the trajectory of our lives.

Mitchell is an international bestselling author of over 60 books, and an executive coach at Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. After interviewing 500 thought leaders on credibility, he published a 7-country international bestselling book, delivered a powerful TEDx on humanity, created courses, and created the Credibility Nation membership community to help those live, learn and surround themselves with others on the credibility journey.

He’s an accomplished entrepreneur who has created twenty businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 750 books. He’s provided strategic consulting to hundreds of companies and has been the chairman of a board of a NASDAQ-listed company.

Mitchell is all about finding people he can trust and being trustworthy in return. Along the way he leveraged the term credibility, to describe the 10 values. Those values describe our character and the perception of your character.

Why be credible? If we are credible, we will be humane to one another. If we are credible, we will form relationships that will prosper our lives and those around us.

This is an inspiring conversation, but also a practical one. Mitchell takes us through his process for listening to what you value and what you do and helps you with a brief description that can be used in any social or business setting that immediately underlines your credibility. And then he can show you how to manifest it in the messaging around your personal and professional brand.

Enjoy the conversation.

Security Executives Defined by Their Value, Not by Their Title

Words are real things. When conveyed through the written word or articulated in a speech, they have the power to direct and shape individual behavior and markets.

With this mind, I would like to discuss what it means to be a professional. I believe we can agree that it infers a ranking conferred by education, skill, or training. Markets show their maturity by the establishment of formal standards that are then used to judge the competency of an individual or product. If they pass the test, they often get a certification that can be aligned with their personal or product brand.

The largest security association in the world is ASIS International. They are an established Standards Developing Organization. That unique role and its associated processes create the context for incubating and formalizing standards and guidelines that drive behavior in the risk, resilience, and security industry.

In our latest conversation, we asked a member of the ASIS committee that has been reviewing, amending, and, he would argue, enhancing the Chief Security Officer Standard originally published in 2004. It will now be called “Senior Security Executive”.

Our conversation takes us back to a time when Physical Security was associated with gates, guns, and guards. And Cyber Security was an IT Management function. Security was not often viewed as a member of the executive team. Largely, the leaders in the security industry did not have a voice because they did not know the language of business. Thus, people were advocating for a job description for a corporate role. Chief Security Officer (CSO), as a title, became the focus.

This conversation centers around the value of a title vs. a role. The new standard will be debated among the original committee and their advocates and many who have benefited from these early adopters. But this new standard has the opportunity to reframe the role in terms of the business.

It the role is reframed and articulated to the business correctly, it will act as a touchstone for reframing security from a solely defensive role into one that acts as a pivotal advisor to the business and its leaders as they navigate risk and opportunity. The framework is expressed through a published guideline: Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM). It describes the enterprise security risk management (ESRM) approach and explains how it can enhance a security program while aligning security resources with organizational strategy to manage risk. Utilizing ESRM security professionals work with asset owners to identify and prioritize assets and risks in order to mitigate those risks and create a holistic security program that supports the organization’s mission.

The gentlemen we spoke with, Michael Gips, Principal of Global Insights in Professional Security has been a top influencer in the industry for over 20 years and is recognized as such by his peers.

Listen to this walk through the history of a profession seeking influence in the vision, mission, and execution of the business. The opportunity is enormous. And it is now.

Enjoy the conversation.

Great Leaders Ask Great Questions

Are you a diminisher or a multiplier? Do you bring all the answers to the table, or do you help others solve problems? Do you believe you are the best voice in the room?

Our guest learned the hard way, that he was a diminisher. He would take a great idea from his staff, acknowledge it, and then suggest how to make it better. After all, that is what great leaders do; make them better.

Bob Tiede is prolific author, blogger, and trainer on how to develop leaders through questions. His book, Leading with Questions has been published in 190+ nations around the world. He has spoken with and met some of the greatest minds around this subject and he shares these stories twice a week on his free subscriber list.

He calls himself a charter member of TA…Tellers Anonymous. And most of us are. We love talking about ourselves and jumping in the arena to help. But we forget the meaningful excavation that can occur with a genuine curiosity in another. through a series of questions. The excavation can produce a rich vein of gold but not if we are filling the hole we were digging with our dirt.

One of the key takeaways from our conversation was the scorecard for a great leader. “Good leaders count their followers”, said Bob. “Great leaders measure the leaders they have developed.”

Bob began this journey in a bookstore when he picked up Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask by Michael J. Marquardt. It was a 2x4 over his head. He was suddenly self-aware. And to seek restitution he turned the book into a training class which was successful. And then he turned it into his first book.

In my practice, we realize that most people start talking after getting an answer to a question. They have learned everything there is to know. But then they miss the answer behind the question. The answer they will never receive. The knowledge never gained. The wisdom never achieved.

Listen to a man with a teller addiction tell his stories. This is not your average ted-talk version of The Great Conversation. You will need some time. But it is worth it. Enjoy.

Living Life on Purpose: The End of TGIF

Imagine there will be four eulogies at your funeral. One will come from a family member. One will come from a friend. One will come from someone you worked with. And another will be delivered by someone who represented how you gave back to the world (Perhaps a charity or ministry).

Now write what they might say today. You might discover something about yourself. It might change the course of your life. You might want to write them again with your new aspirations in mind.

This conversation ends on that note. But where my guest takes us is through a journey of self-discovery intersecting our unique powers, purpose, and passions. If we seek, we shall find, and it will change how our lives flow and flourish.

Tony Davis is the Founder and Chairman of Dovetail Business Solutions (Pty) Ltd and Next Level Insights Group. He is an entrepreneur, consultant, advisor, and a passionate evangelist of “Living your Life on Purpose", which happens to be the book he is currently writing.

You don’t have to be waiting for the week to end (TGIF) or for retirement to begin living.

Enjoy a purpose-filled great conversation!

Beyond the Fenceline: The Mindset of the Next Generation Executive

Scott Lindahl, VP Corporate Services & Chief Security Officer, at Kellogg Company sat down with me in a great conversation around his journey that led him to begin using this language and adopting the behavior of a corporate leader.

Scott’s journey entailed working in manufacturing, retail, financial services as well as a small security services firm. Along the way he studied how salespeople interacted with clients. And he found the best ones had a way of creating a conversation through the power of great questions.

He adopted this as his career matured and, as a result, began to learn not only the business but also the personal and professional drivers of his corporate customers. This approach became the framework that guided his own behavior and those that worked under him. He would call this “freedom within a framework”

With this basic understanding of his journey, we then began to talk about the future. Leaders in every part of an organization are dealing with the same macro and micro issues. The speed of change is accelerating and impacting the way we get things done. Technology, in many cases, is acting as the lever. Scott believes that one of the keys is how to see the whole picture. This will naturally lead us to better ways of gathering and harnessing information that is critical to our organization’s risk and opportunity.

If CSO’s do this well, they can help the CEO and their executive team navigate the road ahead.

Enjoy the conversation.

Leading is a Verb. Learn It, Then Teach It

I tracked down an incredible thought leader on systems and practices. I thought we would be exploring how to execute. Instead, I found a set of ideas that can be put into action. This is important. A set of ideas is not a task list or a set of commands.

If they become that, you are in danger of not finding out what works and what doesn’t. Because you have given them the recipe but not the authority to let them cook.

Dr. Thom Mayer is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BestPractices, Inc., Executive Vice President of EmCare, the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association and Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University and a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke University.

He is one of the most widely-sought speakers on healthcare customer service, trauma and emergency care, pediatric emergency care, medical leadership, and sports medicine. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles, 75 book chapters, and has edited or written 12 textbooks on emergency medicine, including Leadership for Great Customer Service: Satisfied Patients, Satisfied Employees, Leadership for Smooth Patient Flow, Hardwiring Flow, and Strauss and Mayer’s Emergency Department Leadership: Principles and Applications. Tom Peters, the internationally acclaimed leadership guru, has referred to his work as “gaspworthy.” Dr. Mayer was named the ACEP Outstanding Speaker of the Year in the second year the award was given and has twice been named ACEP’s “Over-the-Top” award winner.

On September 11, 2001 Dr. Mayer served as one of the Command Physicians at the Pentagon Rescue Operation, coordinating medical assets at the site. The BestPractices physicians at Inova Fairfax Hospital were the first to successfully diagnose and treat inhalational anthrax victims during the fall 2001 anthrax crises, and Dr. Mayer has served on the Department of Defense on Defense Science Board Task Forces on Bioterrorism, Homeland Security and Consequences of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Dr. Mayer also serves as a Medical Director for the Studer Group.

What I learned:

1. Leadership is worthless but leading is priceless. Leadership is a noun. Leading is a verb delivered with an active voice. You are already a leader.

2. Every team member is a leader.

3. Every team member is a performance athlete. Invest in yourself and your team.

4. The work begins within.

If I take these and hardwire them into my life. I would practice the following:

• I would wake up every morning and say “I am a leader”

• Invest in myself. Spend time getting better at leading.

• Review every day what is working and what is not.

• Find a way to help others leveraging what I have learned.

• Celebrate with “3 Good Things” that are happening. Connect it to an action; that is, what did I do that helped make those 3 good things happen?

Enjoy the conversation.

Bringing to the Surface What is Below the Surface

I met a leader who is a Doctor of Law (JD), is certified on the Essentials of Workplace Violence and Intervention through ASIS, an Instructor at a world-renowned Advanced Threat Assessment Academy, and is a strategic partner in the vision and mission of her organization.

In her role as instructor, she teaches representatives from government, law enforcement, higher education and K12, mental/brhavioral health professionals, and Fortune-500 companies.

I was curious how she pulled all these disciplines together as a leader and as a person.

Melissa Muir, is Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development at the City of Shoreline in Washington State,

The conversation starts with a question: “What does it mean to be in Human Resources these days? And where is it going in the future.?

We hear about a great re-imagining what it means to be at work. What we want to keep, foster, and what is no longer important as the world changes. And I ultimately ask: “How do you get to courage and trust with teams? To call out the elephant in the room.”

Melissa calls it “Bringing to the Surface what is below the Surface”

And through the conversation we learn we have an essential and great power to direct the story of our organization and the people within it.

Enjoy this great conversation.

The Urgency to Understand the Larger Story of Another

The power of story. It influences our lives. We have a personal story, fed by the evolutionary stages of story from our culture, our tribes, and our family. Story describes our core values and the why of our journey.

If you built a business model to help people, companies, and governments understand their identity through story as well as the stories of others you might be able to create a powerful and sustainable engagement that could lead to constructive relationships throughout our world. You might be able to avoid war. You might be able to solve some of the world’s largest problems.

Narrative Strategies has done that. We sat down and talked with the Vice President of Strategy, Paul Cobaugh to help us understand story’s place and its potential. What we found is a different language to describe how stories feed a larger narrative identity, with story being a puzzle piece.

The puzzle creates a picture that tells you something. The stories tell only a piece. Assemble them together and it becomes a narrative of a family, culture, or company.

Since Paul is a veteran, he pulls examples of how he intuitively understood this in his work around the world.

It seems so simple. So simple that it is largely ignored by people in power. But a few are listening. And that is good. The future of our country may depend on it.

Someone needs to be in place to understand the collective stories of our enemies, so we can articulate our ideas and touch their narrative identities. That someone is a “narrator”. The narrator needs to be in it for the long game because relationships based on narrative identity require sustained engagement. And the narrator needs to have a sense of urgency so that our ideas can help shape the future narrative identities of the world. The story is unfolding right now. And we have a front row seat.

Time to have a great conversation!

A Cry for Help: The Pathway of Violence

I am always looking for the seeds of a disruptive new way of thinking. This often is the genesis of a new model for doing business or a new model for governance within a family, association, community, or nation.

From this, new tools are provided to affect the idea and the model. New technologies are created.

In this great conversation, we speak with Marisa Randazzo, Ph.D, Executive Director for the Ontic Center of Excellence,

Through the convergence of her academic experience and her applied research in the field, she became known as an international expert in behavioral threat assessment and protective intelligence, specializing in preventing school shootings, workplace violence, stalking, and assassinations. Before joining forces with Ontic, she was the CEO of SIGMA Threat Management Associates.

She helps me understand the pathway to violence and its potential at stopping violent crimes before they happen. And we explore the ways we can train people be active ‘sensors’ in picking up the signals of a potential threat before it happens. These people sensors are now being augmented by technology that can help collect, manage, and communicate the data creating the means to stop an incident before it happens.

We learn that most potential perpetrators are human beings crying for help. They are not sociopaths or psychopaths or monsters. They are not intrinsically evil. Their acts are.

This basic logic ladder called the pathway to violence is a useful construct for creating innovation and change that our country desperately requires.

Enjoy the conversation.

The Path to Creating a Team

Voracious Learners!

Monica Duperon Rodriquez is Senior Manager of Global Security and Risk Management (Executive Protection) at LinkedIn.

When we sat down to have a great conversation, she immediately drew me into her path to creating a team.

What we find is a deep understanding that developing people and teams takes an investment in knowing who they are. From there you can begin to create partnerships that take the one-on-one relationships and the collaborative team relationships to the next level.

You can hear it in her voice. She is what she preaches: self-aware, authentic, caring, and collaborative. A great foundation for leading people on their path to value.

Enjoy the conversation.

Leveraging Security and Safety for Competitive Advantage

If a CEO’s primary role is navigating risk and opportunity, then they must have a risk, resilience, and security team who is prepared to be at the table.

To be prepared, the Chief Security Officer (CSO) and their team must understand the unique value of their role in supporting the mission and vision of the company. Then they must organize around the interconnected relationships of others who are attempting to create outcomes that matter to the business. And they must find a way to leverage intelligence locally and globally that provides them insights that support the contextual application of risk for the leaders of their company. This is also where the core values of the culture will be engendered and supported.

I find this to be rare.

Because of this, I was absolutely engaged when Debbie Maples, the Vice President of Global Safety & Security: Security Operations, Investigations & Protection at Salesforce, sat down with me in a great conversation around the heart, mind, discipline, and tools of the leadership of the risk, safety, and security leadership of her company.

Just as her company, Salesforce, is in the pursuit of being the premier cloud-based software designed to help businesses find more prospects, close more deals, and wow customers with amazing service, their safety and security team seeks to be premier in risk intelligence, investigations, travel safety and security. Their mindset: the foundation of finding great people, keeping them engaged in the business, and supporting their felt needs, takes a unique blend of leadership, business process, data aggregation platforms, and a passion for service within risk, resilience, safety, and security.

This was truly a great conversation. Enjoy!

We are in Tomorrow

One of the leaders in our Great Conversation community sent me a brief but compelling message:

I want to introduce you to Hans Nyamie for your next Great Conversation. Hans is one of the most interesting people I have spoken with in a long time. He is focused on facility space planning and technology.

When I went to his LinkedIn it told me very little

Workplace and FM Systems Specialist (incl: Agile/Activity Based Working,Space Management & Administration)

Not a lot to go on. But I arranged a call with him although our time differential was significant. London vs. Seattle!

What I found is the anthropomorphic version of glue-ware. Hans seeks to integrate and harmonize the interests of the user, the integrator, and the business around the form, function, and purpose of space.

More importantly, when he is not focused on his existing projects, he is exploring the future meaning of the spaces we occupy. Because the continuous and accelerating change we are experiencing requires a degree of agility and adaptation that the current built environments we have today are not equipped to handle.

In 2021, Facebook announced its future focus on the Metaverse. And our spaces must reflect this new digital transformation. We have a great conversation around space, place, and the future.

Enjoy.

The 5 Pillars of a Strategic Security Program

I meet many people who are unconscious competents. They intuitively know what to do, and largely are successful at doing it.

And then there are the conscious competents. They took the time to understand what they do including the why of it, and the value of it. They document, teach, and, most importantly for any leader competing for funds, sell their program to their stakeholders.

I met Bill Marcisz when he was the Executive Director of Security, Safety, and Emergency Management at AdventHealth in Central Florida. AdventHealth is known as a trailblazer in their research and their use of emerging technology.

Bill not only ran this critically acclaimed program, but he also was called upon as a nationally recognized and Board-Certified Security Expert. After all he has over 40-Years of Security & Legal Experience.

He retired from AdventHealth to devote his energies as the President & Chief Consultant for Strategic Security Management Consulting, Inc. (SSMC)

SSMC provides litigation support to both Plaintiffs and Defense clients. His trial testimony alone has assisted in attaining jury awards up to $13.5 Million.

Bill has also received peer review awards for developing an Outstanding Security Program from both the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS) and International Association for Healthcare Security & Safety (IAHSS).

Bill also received the award for Outstanding Performance by a Director of Security from the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS). This is considered as one of the most prestigious achievements in the Security profession.

Bill shared with us his thoughts on the key components of a strategic security program and what it takes to position it for value.

Enjoy the conversation.

Protecting at the Speed of Risk

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.

The Mind, Culture, and Readiness of Risk and the Business

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.

Since 1993, Gene Deisinger has served as the director of threat management for major organizations. He has provided training and consultation on behavioral threat assessment and management issues to a range of schools, colleges, universities, corporations and non-profit organizations, governmental, military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

He also provides training and consulting to law enforcement agencies regarding leadership and organizational development, crisis management, preparation and response to active threat incidents, response to persons with mental illness, hostage/crisis intervention, and post-incident trauma response.

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.