A Message from Adamo’s CEO, Josh Godknecht
Hello, security leaders. When I’m talking to security leaders, I’m talking to all of us. Whether your job is professional, vocational security enforcement of some sort, or you’re just a parent, friend or a spouse, a citizen at the grocery store, driving on the freeway, all of us have the responsibility for the well-being of our fellow citizen, our fellow family members and other people around us. So this greeting is to you and this video is for you.
I’m reminded, right now at the time of this video, we’re dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. And the virus just goes to show, as a security leader, we’re constantly going to face new and uncertain things. We look back in history, and we can see with clarity how that played out and what they should have done or what they did well. But when we are writing history as we go, everything’s new, there’s no manual to follow, and we just have to do the best we can as we’re walking through history.
Right now, the temptation for us is to respond in fear or in agitation, and to act quickly out of panic because we don’t understand what it is we’re dealing with, or tomorrow what we knew today won’t be the same.
Well, it’s good to remember there are three easy steps we can follow to move together successfully through uncertainty. Every security professional should know this, but if you’re one of those security leaders who just realized, “Oh, I’m a mother, I’m a father, I’m a security leader,” this might be the first time you’re hearing this. So here we go:
Step 1: We don’t let fear or anxiety or other stressful emotions be the dominant voice in our head, ultimately that wants to define our course of action. How do we manage fear? We all feel it. It’s normal. But managing fear—sometimes, the most effective way is actually with other people. Staying connected in times of fear an anxiety or stress is fundamentally important. You can borrow or take courage from a friend who’s not seeing things the same way you are. That’s very important—don’t let fear inform your decisions.
Step 2 is assessment. That’s a combination of a few things: collecting information, learning new facts, understanding and identifying the risks that are inherent to our scenario. Then as you assess and identify those risks, we design solutions—real-world solutions—to mitigate that risk and make it go away. That’s very important to do. And again, we go back to point 1, staying connected, having a couple other perspectives, through that assessment process is absolutely key to being successful here in step 2. And it also helps us with step 1, staying connected, borrowing courage from one another through scary times.
Step 3 is to execute and evaluate. In a less urgent scenario, we could really split this into two steps—step 3 being to execute your solutions and step 4 being to evaluate, “How did that go?” When you’re in an urgent or in more immediate need, you want to actually combine these into one single action or step. And as you execute, you evaluate. This lets us adapt on the fly. I’m going back to step 1 here—the way we can functionally evaluate is to stay connected and bring a team into that evaluation process. It helps us with step 1, it reinforces step 2, and it absolutely is the key to success for step 3 because somebody else is going to see it differently than you. So as we execute, we evaluate—do we need to adapt? Do we need to change pace?
Three easy steps—I didn’t say it was going to be challenging, but it’s not a complicated process for us. When you’re dealing with risk, something unknown, something undetermined, it feels scary. We all feel it. The thing to remember is this: When evil or darkness rise, or unknown and scary things creep up on us, it calls to the inner goodness put in every single human being. Light rises to defeat darkness. Take hope in that, follow the steps. Don’t let fear inform your decisions, assess the risk and identify those risk points with solutions, then execute and evaluate as you need to and adapt. And we will overcome these things together.
Stay safe, security leaders.
