Lessons in security leadership: David Komendat

Vice president and CSO, Boeing

By Mary Brandel

August 08, 2011 — CSO —

The 2011 CSO Compass Award winners discuss prioritizing investments, learning lessons the hard way, and much more

As vice president and CSO at Boeing, David Komendat needs to balance the security needs of the commercial and defense sides of the business, which includes over 160,000 employees in over 70 countries. Komendat's team is responsible for protecting people, property and information, as well as for making the business resilient. His team works to embed security and safety expertise within the business units, projects and sales teams of the largest aerospace company in the world.

CSO: What is the most difficult or rewarding accomplishment of your career?
Komendat: Elevating the security division as an organization that can enable Boeing's individual businesses to succeed in acquiring new business opportunities. It's really exciting to know we can provide the internal expertise to help the business secure a contract instead of having our business partners expend precious funds on outside security consultants.

More lessons from the 2011 CSO Compass Award winners

What has been the biggest change to the CSO role in the past few years?
You really do need to possess good business acumen. You need to run the organization like any other department in the company, with solid financial performance and rigorous metrics and governance processes. If you can talk about business articulately, it brings you more opportunity to help influence what's going on at the company. That's a big change from years ago, when the CSO job was perceived to be only about securing the facilities and preventing bad things from happening.

What are three fail-proof principles of security leadership?
Surround yourself with people smarter than you. They will challenge you when necessary, help drive improvement and make you think beyond yourself. You want people who are good leaders at every single level, as well a diverse group of high-potential personnel in the pipeline.

Be a good communicator. Tell people what the vision is and how to get the team there. Just as important, be a good listener and ask for input frequently—and use it.

Third, be decisive. A lot of times you want to lead by consensus, but sometimes you need to make critical decisions very rapidly. You don't always have all the data you'd want to have, but you've got to make a decision. Trust your experience, make the call and move forward.