The Great Conversation

We used to think job security was important. And it may be. But what if the real need is to belong to something bigger than ourselves? I sit down with an accomplished executive coach who has been helping C-suite executives around the world unlock their leadership power to deliver on their strategic and personal objectives. She is a former global HR executive with a highly attuned ability to listen...

The former global head of communications and crisis management at one of the world’s largest insurance companies, became an international business coach on strategic communications through his company The Orvieto Academy for Communicative Leadership . We speak with him from Rome, where he has been since the pandemic. Emilio is a thought leader in communicative leadership which focuses on empowerin...

We have been using VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) to describe the world in which we live and our response to it since the United States Army War College used it following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Imagine what military planners faced with a radically different international security environment that had emerged. VUCA was used to describe it. Now business, in th...

I had a great conversation with a former FBI Special Agent and Head of Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program (RET) who spent 21+ years of working counterintelligence. I was intrigued on what he had learned about reading people. What I was not prepared for was his relentless flywheel of learning that he has developed to become a better person and leader. The tools he developed are used to...

No one wants to see this picture. (Podcast listeners, go to our blog on March 15, 2020) . It offends us. It depresses us. But it is a graphic example of Gallup’s recent poll on the disengagement of the workforce. In this conversation, we find two amazing leaders who decided to change that narrative in their own unique way. It is a conversation of hope in the midst of the Great Resignation. “For th...

I have had the opportunity to meet many of the executives who planned on attending the Protective Intelligence Summit hosted by Ontic last month. Staying true to the summit’s theme to “widen the aperture of security”, I had been meeting with HR, CISOs, CSOs, CCOs, and Chief Legal Officers (CLOs). I also was preparing to facilitate a discussion around uniting Legal and Security at the Summit. Befor...

When we were preparing to participate in a Protective Intelligence Summit hosted by Ontic, Steven Antoine and I decided to have a great conversation about some of the agonizingly persistent questions around the functional role of the risk, resilience, and security leader. Steven is the Vice President of Global Security for the North American Pepsico organization. Before that, he was the CSO of Glo...

Brian Tuskan is a senior executive leader (CSO) for a Fortune 500 organization that we have known since the early days of The Great Conversation. His ability to absorb new technology, leadership skills, and industry experience and learnings, has allowed him to grow personally and professionally. We caught up with him to understand what was front of mind for him and to help us define security’s evo...

I rarely meet people who are trying to anticipate change in a healthy way. The one’s who do practice a rigorous discipline of inquiry without assuming what they have learned is enough to navigate the risks and opportunities of tomorrow. Nathan Mills, a senior enterprise risk management executive in Zoom is such a person. With a unique background in technology, business operations, intelligence, an...

Dale Buckner, CEO of Global Guardian , a risk management, and advisory firm, is a trusted supplier to global organizations around the world. We have been following Dale for some time, and his public briefings are enormously powerful. This great conversation is relevant to CEOs and their board of directors. It revolves around the question: “What have you done over the past two years to create compe...

There are recurring questions that risk, resilience, security, and business leaders have been asking themselves for years. They are common themes we hear at the seminars and conferences alike. Questions like: Is security mission critical to the execution of the business? If so, how is this evidenced in the strategic planning and execution of the executive management team (EMT)? (CFO, CIO, CISO, CL...

One of the key disciplines I have leveraged and taught falls under a personal philosophy of mine: “Never waste an opportunity to learn” On February 21-23, Ontic , a leading platform for protective intelligence, is hosting a thought leader forum . It promises to be an inflection point for the organizational leaders who influence the policies, procedures, people, and tools around proactive risk mana...

Most people are looking for something. Early on it could be as simple as love from a parent or friends. It might evolve into living vicariously through our heroes. Then attention naturally focuses on a career path, a search for a combination of recognition, or power, or wealth. But very few of us think about our end of days. I was originally attracted to Nick Brossit, Ed. D. through a posting on L...

There is no one way to look at PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) there are 636,120 ways to have PTSD. However, those of us who have not been diagnosed with PTSD can learn a lot from those who have served our combat veterans on how to deal with stress and trauma, especially in these uncertain times. One of our Great Conversa...

Something is wrong. We have so many tools within our reach that would position our organizations more strategically, improve our processes exponentially, and create value within our market ecosystems. But for some reason, we cannot get our people to believe that their work is essential to their life and well-being. Work has become something you do while you are waiting for life to begin. You can s...

In business, we start with how people think, feel, and respond. We put tools in their hands. The tools inspire behavior. They become personal and professional. And if you are one of the fortunate, yet small minority, that is successful harnessing their positive reaction to your tool, you are on the path to value. I seldom see the agents of change be motivated by purely money. They usually seek imp...

If you think about it, protecting those who lead us must be one of the oldest professions. Today there is a professional practice called “Executive Protection”. In most companies, it is one of many spokes of their security program wheel. But for some time now, the practice of risk management and security has been undergoing a radical transformation. The deluge of information and the ability to col...

Every week we work, we strive, we fear, and we love. If we are fortunate, we take time to listen to music. If we are even more fortunate, we find ourselves in a small, comfortable venue listening to live music. It could be jazz, the blues, reggae, or rock and roll. It doesn’t matter. Because music, according to psychology experts, can reduce your stress level. And stress is impacts are brain and m...

With the rapid pace of change in technology, the need for the strategic integration of the technology to leverage the data it is aggregating and consuming, and, finally, the cost of labor vs. the return, new business models have emerged. We explore one such company riding these changes. The CEO, Daniel Forest, shares his entrepreneurial background and nature and how it informed and infused his com...

We love finding people of passion who have connected their passion and calling in such a way that they influence executives and companies around the world. Recently we connected with the President of Parks Associates, Elizabeth Parks, a second-generation business owner with a legacy of aggregating information about the residential and small business security market. Because of their compendium of...

Since the time of the ancients, Arcadia has been the inspiration for poets, painters, and writers attracted to an idyllic time and place. Arcadia was and is that place. It is a real location (southern Greece) as well as a mythological one. It is where many of the myths were born. And myths are ideas. And ideas are real things. They can shape us, inspire us, and define us. How this happens is throu...

Can “struggle” be our best chance at discovering who we are? We found an author who explores this with us in The Great Conversation. Bobby Herrera is the author of  The Gift of Struggle , a book about leadership and the life-changing lessons we learn through our struggles. He is also the co-founder and president of  Populus Group . With a passion for building strong culture and communities through...

If we are fortunate enough to have the resources and time to help others in need, we truly are blessed. If we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we also have the duty to step in and help others find their path and courage to pursue hope, liberty, and happiness. David Nicastro of Secure Source International is in the business of helping his clients navigate travel around the wo...

If you have worked for a variety of access control technology vendors, you have an inside view of how they develop their products and their go to market strategies. We wanted to leverage those insights to explore the next generation of what we call Unbound Intelligent Security. To do that, we looked up Paul Dipeso who works for a company called Feenics that purports to be the “rebirth of access co...

We wanted to be a fly on the wall when an integrator interviewed a potential technology vendor that happened to be offering an enterprise platform for integrating video management into access control, health monitoring, IoT integration, and analytics at the edge. While we listened in they discussed the current state of best-in-class video monitoring, the value of the data center platforms like Goo...