Lessons in security leadership: Dwaine Nichol

Manager of security and life safety, City of Toronto

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 Manager of security and life safety for the City of Toronto, Dwaine Nichol is responsible for securing the diverse operations of the largest municipality in Canada and the fifth-largest city in North America. These operations include 1,500 facilities, including water resources, social-assistance offices, recreation centers, day care facilities, City Hall, and Union Station, the busiest transportation hub in Canada. Under ­Nichol's 12 years of management, Toronto has implemented a citywide strategic security plan—a key document that Nichol says the organization relies on heavily—and video-surveillance policy that brought all 1,000-plus cameras used in the city under the Corporate Security Unit.

Nichol has been qualified by ASIS International as a Certified Protection Professional and has extensive knowledge of workplace violence.

CSO: What is unique about the security challenges you face in Toronto?
Nichol: Because Toronto is a large and very diverse multicultural city, the challenges are also very diverse. In one day, we could have a protest at City Hall, security-system issues at a number of water facilities, and a major incident at Union Station.

It's also very political—the city has 44 councilors and a mayor, and we need to always be in response mode. What they say publicly can always affect security in some fashion.

What was the most difficult or rewarding accomplishment of your career?
I'm most proud of that fact that we've been able to retain for a number of years an outstanding security-management team who could easily be stars in another organization but are very dedicated to the City of Toronto. To see their energy and enthusiasm in the face of challenges on a daily basis is, I find, a great reward.

What has been the biggest change to the CSO role in the past few years?
There's been a push to see security as a value enhancer versus a cost center and to practice what we preach in terms of showing clients how security contributes to the business, using metrics and showing ROI. One of our priorities is developing metrics that are important to the different divisions and giving them monthly reports: number of security occurrences, year-over-year change, how many alarm responses, how many major events.

Can you name one of the biggest mistakes you've made during your security career and what you learned from it?
Underestimating [the importance of] my work-life balance. A few years ago, I got to a point where I couldn't enjoy downtime at all. I remember being at one of my son's ballgames, and I was working, and I saw the other parents just enjoying their time. That was the moment I said, I've got to do something about this. I started reading everything I could about time management and began really picking up on those principles that are often said but not often done—work smarter not harder, have a realistic plan of what you want to accomplish each day, delegate authority, block off time to do things that are incredibly important but that can get lost in the everyday shuffle.

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