In the final installment of his series, Tim Wenzel, CPP, Co-Founder and President of The Kindness Games, discusses how to become the person to lead the way and overcome the insecurity in security.

Leading the way

“It is not your risk to bear.” – Tim McCreight 

The Prophet. Often cited in religious and mythological contexts, prophets are revered for their cultural insight, understanding of the future and clarity around the plan forward.

How often have we wished we could see what was coming with enough time to change course?

You can become The Prophet to your organization or even your clientele… It is not magic, not a spiritual power, it is the product of overcoming the insecurity within yourself and your security organization.

The first lesson we can learn from depictions of prophets foretelling future events is this: 

It’s never personal. The prophecy never seems to affect or have an impact on them. They seem impartial, uninfluenced and free from anxiety…

Tim McCreight reiterates this line every time he teaches security professionals about their role within Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM) and security risk within the business you serve.

It’s not yours. Risk is owned by the business unit which assigns value to an asset and ultimately has ownership and the final say around what happens to that asset.

Security departments and professionals have a well earned reputation of being combative and taking the decisions handed down by the business as a personal affront.

You are isolating yourself, your department and your ability to be effective.

As an industry, it’s time to let go, step away from the need to be in control and zoom out so we can truly see what is happening in an objective manner.

You need to decide why you are leading… Are you leading for Me or for We?

We identify our competency traps

We let go of our fear of “being in trouble.”

It’s not a metric for success and it is a heavy shackle that should have stayed at your government job.

You’ll let go of your strange desire to hoard information, thinking it is power.

You’ll break yourself out of the scarcity mindset and realize that if you stop worrying about the one opportunity you currently have – your job – a whole world of opportunities opens to you.

It’s the counterintuitive, chain breaking mindset that if you let go of what you have, you can reach something greater… If you let go of yourself, you can find and serve something greater than yourself… 

Once you and your current circumstances are no longer your primary concern… you’ll be shocked to find that you will really never be “in trouble” again…

We actively design for transparency

We decide to learn about and embrace the business of the organization that we serve.

We embrace the international language of business, which is Risk, and we learn how the business units we serve think about risk and compare their perspectives to what we deliver to them.

In our security organization we embrace and document Governance, Risk Management and Program Management to recreate ourselves akin to the business units we serve and we lead conversations about how we might enable their business goals.

It is amazing the state of flow you can find yourself in with your business partners when you don’t have to worry about what you need to hide from them…

The second lesson we can learn from the illustrations of a prophet: 

They understand who is who and the order in which things are accomplished.

They provide direction which works within the framework of their audience… They are not trying to tear down the machine, but to guide it.

During this series I have provided a roadmap for becoming intimately familiar with the inner workings and relationships within your organization.

If you practice these steps, you can quickly learn the inner workings of your clientele and provide exceedingly insightful advice… 

We design and enable operational consistency

We templatize and standardize our operations. We create our way of doing business.

Uniform methods of intaking concerns from the business, defining the risks associated and choosing the correct operation to manage that risk.

This allows us to measure results, identify deviations from our standard practice and implement a Quality Assurance program.

Debriefs become a regular occurrence, not just when things went wrong.

Our teams become accustomed to being transparent, learning lessons and trying to develop better practices all the time, not just when “we’re in trouble.”

After a while, when things go wrong, it doesn’t feel very different from when things go right… that anxiety and fear is gone, freeing our teams to think, decide and manage the scenario at hand rather than the various scenarios in their head.

We reject the zero sum mindset

We embrace the fact that questions are not a challenge to our authority, they are an integral pathway to success and healthy cultures.

We bring and entertain options, letting go of the fallacy that if we are in charge, then it has to be our way, our idea.

We facilitate open dialogue because we realize that if we are the smartest person in the room… we’re in the wrong room.

We are correctly diagnosing business pain

We are now in a position to be conducting root cause analysis on the business’ pain.

We can map broken processes and cultural dynamics to threats and vulnerability to specifically understand how to promote wellness and create a secure environment.

In this final installment around The Insecurity in Security, we see a security professional who is no longer prone to incidental anxiety or pressure.

This person has become thoughtful in their craft and insightful in their conversations… Why is this the culmination of this journey?

This journey’s goal has been to become the rarest thing of all in the security industry: a person, team, department or security organization in which fear is not a primary factor in their decision making.

The final take away from depictions of prophets:

Their steady nature and boldness when they speak truth that people do not want to hear.

They’ve let go of fear. While they understand there could be very negative consequences for their actions, fear ceases to motivate them… Their motivation is for the good of those around them.

Seeing what comes next before anyone else will not always make you popular, but it does make you useful.

When our motivations are pure, when we seek the betterment and elevation of everyone around us, this inspires trust and influence is granted.

Learning how to communicate well is key. Understanding how to approach people in all contexts with all types of news is key to helping others understand.

If you can free yourself and your teams from The Insecurity in Security, your team can become “the calm” in every storm. 

Calm is welcome in every uncertain situation… By overcoming The Insecurity in Security and becoming a close stakeholder throughout the business, you will find yourself invited to the meetings and boardrooms you haven’t been in the past… so the question will be, how will you be invited back?

In 2025 I will be sharing lessons from the Boardroom; a new series to help our industry understand this dynamic, how to be effective and to influence throughout an enterprise.

Read the previous article in Tim’ series here and find the full series here. Keep an eye out for his next series, coming in 2025!