Denial Is A Bad Strategy For Your Security Guard
According to author and entrepreneur Paul Ormerod, more than 10% of all companies in the US close their doors yearly. One of the major reasons for those companies’ failures, according to Ormerod, is denial. Don’t let yours be one of those doomed companies.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone and thought to yourself, “Is he kidding? That’s a horrible idea!” Every now and then I have those types of conversations with security guard company owners regarding our security guard tour tracking software. After we extol the virtues of being able to track security officers in real time using GPS, some owners, surprisingly, will say, “No, I don’t want my customers to know if my officers aren’t doing their jobs.”
In most cases, not wanting their customers to know also probably means that they themselves don’t know or don’t want to know. Far be it from me to tell a customer how to run their business, but I doubt that denial has ever been a successful management strategy. However, I do understand the reason that some owners might think this way: fear.
Fear of hearing about a new problem is understandable, especially when much of your day is already spent putting out fires. But because you don’t know about a problem, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that sooner or later you will be getting a call from an angry customer about something that could have been solved beforehand.
An owner or manager of a security guard company, you’ll have to eventually cowboy up unless you want to be included in that failed 10% of companies. So, once you’ve decided to put fear aside and address the issues facing your company, here are a few strategies that I have found useful when navigating my company’s challenges.
First, you have to listen to your gut. Nine times out of 10 you already know what you need to do to solve the issues that you have. Many times, those solutions aren’t easy or pleasant, but trust your instincts and go for it.
Second, if the problem is widespread you will have to deal with it in bite-sized chunks. My father often says, “How do you eat an elephant? Answer: one piece at a time.” Start by drilling down into the problem to identify its individual components. Once you have identified those pieces, you can solve them one at a time.
Third, focus on where it is that you want to end up. If you are like me, you are not always able to see the path from where you are now to where you want you to be. Working backwards can give you insight into how to get there in the form of a creative or outside-the-box solution.
Finally, you have to be honest about what you will be able to accomplish when addressing your security guard company’s challenges. Reducing your overtime to zero or guaranteeing that your officers will never sleep on the job may be great goals, but are they realistic? Not every problem has a perfect solution—realizing this is a necessary part of solving problems. Get as close as reasonably possible to perfect and then plan for the eventualities.
In the long run, turning a blind eye to your security guard company’s issues will always be a recipe for failure. If you doubt there are lessons to be learned from living in denial, ask your friends who work at—or used to work at—Kodak, Hummer, and Blackberry.
You may not know what issues your company has, but that doesn’t meant you don’t have them. One of the things you should be doing to find out is conducting an annual company review.