Click. And it was gone again. For the SECOND time today…
Welcome to my world today.
You see, in addition to last year’s Cape Town water crisis, South Africa also has a small issue with electricity generation.
Ok. You’re right. It’s not so small.
Yesterday marked the first appearance of Stage 4 loadshedding, which basically means that everyone in the country gets to be without power 12 times over a four-day period for 2 hours at a time..OR..it might even mean that for 12 times over an eight-day period, we’ll be without power for 4 hours at a time.
In the last 2 days, it’s happened 3 times for 2 hours, so my guess is that they’re just getting started—even if they do say they’ve dropped back to “Stage 3.”
Stage 4 means that 4,000 MW of electricity demand needs to be “shed” (removed) from the power grid. If it isn’t, then it almost guarantees a nationwide blackout that could last for several days.
Imagine for a moment what the implications of THAT particular scenario might be in a highly xenophobic nation with a 28% unemployment rate and where 75% of employees in the country count as “low-skilled” or “semi-skilled.”
Right.
We don’t want to go there.
Where we DO want to go is back in time to the year 1996 when Eskom warned the government that the country was running out of electricity. The request at the time was to build new power stations to prevent future capacity shortages.
And they got a big fat NO.
In 1998, another warning was issued, again falling on deaf ears.
9 years later…BOOM! Not enough electricity.
Enter “loadshedding”. For 23 days, and at the time, the estimated cost of not supplying electricity was R75 per kWh. in 2007, the Rand to USD was 7:1, so it was ~$11 per kWh.
Today, the exchange rate is almost 14:1 (so about half), and some of it is a direct result of the economic impact of saying no to that first request for power stations.
Now, in a scenario like this, let’s reframe it slightly in terms that are nearer and dearer to our beating security-centric hearts:
THE BUSINESS OBJECTIVE (c.1994): Foster economic growth to increase employment and lessen poverty
THE RISK SCENARIO: increasing demand will outstrip the power generation capacity 10 years from now
THE CONTROL OBJECTIVE: increase the power generation capacity so we don’t run out of power
THE CONTROL MECHANISM: power stations
So, the scenario is clear. The case is obvious. The rationale for saying “no” is opaque…
…but the cause is not.
You see, the CAUSE of me typing this email in the still quiet disturbed only by the sound of the wind blowing through the trees outside and WITHOUT being surrounded by the normal, soothing whir of electronic equipment can be summed up by the Law of the 7 P’s which states:
Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.
Stripping away all the history…and the politics…and the non-security-ness of the above scenario, my take on the situation is pretty simple:
Someone…somewhere…didn’t make the right call at the right time, and that failure to make the right call traceably led to the current crisis.
Now, maybe you like the exhilaration and energy of a crisis, but when you’re sitting trying to write an email without power, I bet you won’t think it’s so cool.
Because sitting writing an email without power is an immediate symptom of some stinking cesspool that’s been oozing out of cracks in the system for a long, long time.
That ooze could’ve all been stopped much, much earlier and with a much smaller mess to clean up now. All it would’ve taken was someone making the right decision…someone building the right case…or someone believing they were actually accountable for the decisions they did or didn’t make.
So what does that first set of 3 P’s mean for a security leader?
It means building strong relationships and rapport with the people you’re trying to advise and support. You build those relationships so that they’ll listen to you, and give value to your opinions and advice.
It means doing your homework so your advice is as good as it can possibly be. You do your homework so you have an in-depth understanding of BOTH your world and theirs, and how those worlds are likely to evolve in the future.
It means thinking creatively—both about the problem at hand, and how to measure, evaluate and demonstrate the value of the fruits of your creative thinking.
Miss any one of those 3 factors, and those first 3 P’s are pretty-much unattainable.
And If you can’t do the first 3, you’re pretty much guaranteed to end up with the last 3.
If you’re lucky, the last 3 mean that you have a minor incident that you can easily contain.
If you’re NOT lucky, you get it so wrong that the company goes out of business on your watch.
If you’re THAT unlucky, whatever happens to you isn’t really the point. It’s what happened to everyone else on your watch that matters.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “WAHOO!! Today’s gonna be a Piss-Poor Performance day!”
But knowing how…when…and what to do to consistently and methodically execute “Proper Previous Planning” is often a big unknown.
So even when you wanna do great, if you’re not clear on what to do, what are you likely to get?
That’s right: Piss-Poor Performance.
We can help you turn that unknown into a well-defined known.
We can help you live by the Law of the 7 P’s.
And we can help you deliver consistent, measurable and predictable security results that prevent Piss-Poor Performance…
…so you, your customers or the organization won’t be sitting in the dark.
Here’s the link: https://archistry.com/go/SecurityLeader
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
