How To

How To Worry So That Others Can Relax and Do Their Jobs

Imagining the worst helps bring out the best in others

By Lew McCreary

Page 2

You'd also need to worry about protecting your intellectual propertywhatever constitutes the proprietary secret sauce of what you do. "You need to be comfortable that [it] won't be stolen or otherwise used for somebody else's profit," Lefler says. Meaning, make sure that your Chinese manufacturing partner is not producing extra units of your products and selling them under a different label.

What makes worrying a constructive activity rather than a manifestation of neurosis comes down to what you do with it. Having identified some worrisome threats, you must then decide on appropriate steps to take and get management to agree to them. That buy-in will depend on the mind-set of senior managementhow ready they are to look beyond the next quarter. Sometimes it's possible to get management's attention by reminding them of the hideous misfortune of some other company within your sector. Unfortunately, firsthand experience is the best teacher.

"Often the companies that are best prepared to deal with the future, in terms of readiness, are the ones that in the past have suffered some kind of difficult situation," Lefler says.

Does engaging in a disciplined exercise of dire imaginings take its toll on security executives? "You're correct," says Lefler, "that security directors do become rather cynical. They are professional worriers. But that's what we're paid to do...and the good news is that when you're successful at doing this, the company is successful and there are no problems. If there are no problems, the businesspeople can concentrate on taking care of business," he says. "So, the real reward for a security director is the absence of a problem."

And the burden of worry shouldered by CSOs makes the company more productive. Lefler says, "If the businesspeople are having to spend any large percentage of their time worrying about security issues, then I have not been doing my job."