From the Bookshelf

Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM, STEPHANIE SILK

“THE ART OF WAR for Security Managers: 10 Steps to Enhance Your Organizational Effectiveness,” by Scott A. Watson CPP, CFE. With more than 15 years of experience in the security industry, the author is currently CEO of S.A. Watson & Associates LLC, Dover, N.H., a security and crisis management consulting firm. The book was published by Elsevier Inc., Burlington, Mass.

“The Art of War,” by ancient Chinese author Sun Tzu, is one of the most influential books on military strategy ever written because of its early realist take on the international relations theory. Scott A. Watson has taken the classic Tzu book and provided an outline of its application for those in today's security industry.

Watson uses Tzu's classic concepts to compile 10 issues that today's professional security managers face on a day-to-day basis. He urges the reader to use energy — not fighting — to accomplish his or her goals. A throwback to Far Eastern culture and martial arts, the theories make sense, and provide a serene outlook on everyday issues. The introduction to the book offers an overview of “The Art of War,” and from there, lists 10 steps to enhance organizational effectiveness:

• Continually develop and exercise leadership.
• Accept that conflict is both inevitable and necessary.
• Endeavor to understand your own behavior and that of your adversary.
• Assess your situation.
• Keep the mission in focus.
• Strike when the odds of success are the best.
• Be able to change positions quickly in order to gain the advantage.
• Adapt to change.
• Don't be predictable.
• Continually collect, analyze and apply information.

Each chapter, peppered with Eastern symbols and focusing a particular step, opens with a Tzu quote and leads into the thought by asking questions and showing characteristics of the selected step. The author then ends the chapter by asking a series of discussion questions.

Taking into account a very important aspect of the business world — conflict (and step 2) — Watson strives to describe the four types of major conflicts a manager faces. They are conflicts over resources, conflicts over influence, interpersonal conflicts and the security manager and the conflict. In order for these leaders to make rational choices that maximize return on investment, he offers the idea that while these four items are inevitable — they don't have to be costly. He demonstrates that the result can end in a framework of understanding and dealing with conflict.

Step 8 — or as the chapter is called, “Adapt to the Battlefield” (a war-inspired shout-out to Tzu) — is all about the change that managers face — whether they want to or not. Here he offers unconventional scenarios and poses questions: What steps do you take when your office breaks out in pandemic flu? What if corporate gives your department a new assignment — one with which you have no experience?

Finally, in a chapter about Homeland security combined with the Art of War, the author speaks about his personal political beliefs and what he calls, “the wrong question to ask” about Sept. 11, which is, “are we safer now than we were five years ago?” He goes on to say the country needs to ask questions about the War on Terror — and how a security professional has a role in it. Watson writes that even if the reader thinks these current situations play a part outside of his or her realm, the concepts he concocted should offer the reader value in waging and winning his or her own “war.”

The end of the book includes an extensive appendix in which Watson gives job aids that the security manager can use in day-to-day situations. These include diagrams, explanations and theories, lists of what's important — and not important — and self-motivational quizzes.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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