Adapting Mindsets To Change

Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Larry Anderson, Editor

How can you defeat an enemy who is changing his tactics? Obviously, you have to change tactics yourself.

One example of the need to do so can be seen in the U.S. military, which some say continues to use yesterday's strategies in a “war” (on terrorism) being waged by an enemy unlike any we have faced before. The premise of a forthcoming book that crossed my desk last week, “Worst Enemy” by John Arquilla (www.ivanrdee.com), is that the U.S. military, despite staggering defense costs, has not learned how to confront terrorist networks. The book suggests that traditional thinking has concentrated on potentially outdated military systems, thereby stunting our ability to wage so-called “irregular” warfare.

It's a lesson that also resonates for security practitioners, who face an ever-changing landscape of risks, sometimes, unfortunately, using yesterday's systems and strategies. Just keeping up-to-date with the latest risks is a huge challenge for today's security professionals, not to mention the need to respond to the challenge with limited resources and sometimes burdened by a bureaucratic corporate mindset.

The parallels to warfare and our military are obvious. As the author Arquilla notes: “It grows more evident each day that warfare has been moving into a new realm where very small combat formations can achieve high levels of destruction and disruption. The only question is whether we will explore this new landscape with new kinds of forces and weapons, or march our 20th century military off into a 21st century wilderness, unchanged and unassisted.”

The security industry would do well to ask itself the same question.

We welcome your feedback:
E-mail landerson@securitysolutions.com

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