Sue Seaby the former group head of security for Barclays has started her own consultancy.
Rather than being an ABC (another bloody consultant) she is focusing on customer relationship management – which can mean both how the head of corporate security makes a business case inside their own organisation, as a business manager themselves; and how suppliers can better relate to that corporate head. After her 30 years in corporate security in aviation and finance, she was MD of consultancy Global Aware International for 15 months.
Doing security well is not enough to be a head of corporate security. You have to understand your business – and sell yourself, and what you do. You have to be a business manager as well as a security manager, Sue Seaby tells Mark Rowe.
No longer can a corporate security manager be someone in the basement – metaphorically and literally – issuing access control cards and reporting a lost asset. “Now,” Sue Seaby says, “the corporate security professional is a business manager. They need to understand the direction of the company, need to be involved in strategy. And so some people who have military and police backgrounds, while they bring a lot of security experience, they don’t necessarily bring the commercial experience.” To repeat, you have to be a business manager and a security manager, and through no fault of their own, some people in private security are struggling with that. You the corporate security person have what you think is a great idea; it may be a great idea; but have you made a business case for it? Every other department of your company wants to procure things and has its own great ideas. Funds are limited; are you making the best case? And on the other side of the fence, with the suppliers, or service partners, call them what you want: do they understand how their customers buy. Gone, Sue suggests, are the days when security manager and supplier would talk about a new access control system; they would negotiate, which might bring a reduced price offered; the two would shake hands, and the security manager would write a cheque and have a new access control system. Now, Sue says, it’s a very different process; corporate security has to define needs; relate it to strategy; go through a tender process. So suppliers may be at the top of their field, but in their client relationship management … not quite as good.
Sue recalls that as a corporate security person – in her 30 years she rose to become head of group security at Barclays – she wanted suppliers as partners. Saying, and doing, she adds, could be two different things. A supplier’s idea of partnership could be getting the signed order, doing the installation, and two years and nine months (into a three-year deal) later, the supplier rang to ask how things were. A supplier seeking to be a genuine partner, to build a rapport with the customer, could ask – what is the Barclays (for example) strategy? Is the bank going to electronic security over Internet Protocol? Is it opening new branches, in new markets? A wise partner, Sue suggests, would talk to the client about more than pure technology. There could be more in it for a supplier; the supplier may think it has a fantastic idea or product, but does the customer see it that way?! Customers may be arrogant, and treat their suppliers on the basis ‘don’t speak to me unless I speak to you’. But in that case, are both sides missing a trick? Rather than corporate security re-inventing the wheel, does a supplier have similar experience?
Similarly with facilities management (FM), which has seen a trend of contractors offering corporates ‘bundled’ services such as cleaning and security guarding. Should the corporate security and FM managers even bother to talk to each other?! There are some links; the cleaners pass through security to start work and are guarded overnight. You will not get a cleaner doing the job of front reception; nor will you get a guard to double up as a cleaner. But say there is an incident in the night, and there are ten guards and 20 cleaners, it may be that the cleaners can do a useful security task, of standing on a door and not letting anybody in. As for business continuity: FM managers depend on their suppliers. Does FM and corporate security here, too, understand what their company does and needs to do what it does? Take a flood. The FM manager may know of a supplier that provides a recovery service after flooding; but what if that supplier works only Monday to Friday and it’s Saturday?!
The corporate head of security should make sure they put time and training into staff. There’s still that old, old idea, Sue notes (and not only in security?!) that if your deputy knows too much they will take your job. Do you, the corporate head of security, really do proper succession planning? Being a business manager – internally selling a business case for what the security department does and wants to do – is something, Sue stresses, that you have to learn. “Hands on is great, if that is what you want to do in security. And there are people I know who are really good operational people,” people who will never become head of corporate security and do not want to. The higher you go, Sue argues, the more commercially minded you have to be. You may think that no-one in your company does security things such as close protection, but it may be that in your own building you can tap into others who know of suppliers. And the commercial-mindedness applies to ‘selling’ security inside your business. Take counter-terrorism. The official threat level is severe (‘a terrorist attack is highly likely’). Security people will work by that; but how willing to listen will managers in your company, about a threat that has been the same level for years? And when was the last terror attack? So what’s the risk? And you want more money? So the answer might be. Unless you can make the business case. Security managers will say, as Sue Seaby acknowledges, that there are never enough hours in the day and you can work from 7am to midnight; if by picking up something from a supplier or someone else in your organisation, you save yourself having to find a name and supplier, you can shave hours off your day.
Do former police or military people have this commercial mind? It is, as Sue says, an old chestnut. She notes that senior police officers are coming into private security with more commercial awareness, because they, too, are ‘selling’ their business to the public. There are arrangements around whereby senior police on coming out of the force are learning from business professionals. Sue mentions London First’s leadership mentoring scheme (recently re-launched to add the City of London and British Transport Police to the Met). The police or military person’s CV, baldly written, will look impressive but not relevant to corporate security – not much call for stripping a tank or wearing camouflage in Canary Wharf?! That said, those are skills, and if presented properly they can have corporate meaning. You can read a map? That means you can plan; and form and carry out strategy. As for former police – and Sue grants that it’s a generalisation: the police work in terms of black and white; a citizen is good, or arrested. In the corporate world, Sue speaks of a ‘corporate grey area you have to live with’. If a member of staff has stolen something, it may be the reaction of a former police officer to ring West End Central and have the offender arrested. But is that what the company wants – a company that spends money on its brand, and its reputation? Does that company want its (former) employees in court and reported in newspapers. Senior police are, Sue adds, having to become corporate and business managers inside the police (and criticised for being in an office rather than on the beat?). Many successful police and military people go on to success in corporate security afterwards. As Sue says, she is not ex-police or ex-military and, to state the obvious, she is a woman. “Don’t even get me started on where the girls are in all this, because there aren’t any; that’s a different soap-box!” She describes herself as a security generalist who has learned her trade along the way. More senior women are coming out of the police, she reports, ‘but it’s still a slow old process I have to say.’ Hence her work with business forums such as the British Institute of Facilities Management’s (BIFM, www.bifm.org.uk) Women in FM.
About Sue Seaby: a customer services background; 30 years in corporate security in aviation and finance. Former group head of security for Barclays; became MD of consultancy Global Aware International; recently started her own consultancy.
