I have to admit I was a bit stuck today when I was trying to decide what to write about. I mean, I have about 20 different emails in the queue about this month’s Security Sanity™ issue on governance, but all I could think of earlier was boring stuff…
…or doom and gloom examples from recent catastrophic governance failures like VW and Equifax. And, while I’m probably going to end up with a few of those examples – especially some choice observations from the Equifax kerfuffle based on my reading between the lines of the Senate report, I just really didn’t want to go there today.
And, lo and behold, I was making dinner for the family when Mose Allison came to my rescue on my favorite streaming station from Clarksdale, MI. You see, the subject line is a line from a 1962 Allison track that he could’ve well written about the state of modern organizational governance.
And that line about “there’s always somebody playin’ with dynamite” might have been written based on the stats from a McKinsey survey that said that 72% of senior executives thought that bad strategic decisions were about as frequent as good ones, or – even worse – that bad strategic decisions…
…were the norm.
Yep. Definitely always somebody playin’ with dynamite in our organizations if those stats hold true. And Allison’s response to the situation is that after spending a lot of time thinking about the whole situation, that, well…
“Now I don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cause I know nothin’s gonna be alright.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have to personally admit that I’ve had thoughts along those lines in some of the organizations – or projects – I was working on in the past. It just seemed that there was always someone running around like Wile E. Coyote with a big box marked TNT and their hair on fire…just damn-well determined to make their mark, some hell or high water…
…and, also completely independently of whether they ended up a hero or a greasy spot on the wall.
And, for the most part, I think Allison’s actually got it right. If you spend all your time fretting about stuff you can’t control, then it most certainly will drive you to drink, some other kinds of escapes…or maybe even a kick or two in the direction of your faithful hound at home from time to time.
Learning the boundaries of what we can and can’t control is probably one of the hardest lessons we’ll ever actually learn. And cutting it back to be that black and white took me until earlier this year when I was really trying to take stock and figure out what I needed to do to take Archistry to the next level.
No, your phonograph needle ain’t a skippin’, but I know I say this a lot. There’s only two things you can ultimately control: your activity, and your behavior. If you spend your time choosing wisely what those things should really be, then you’ve the best chance of keeping your sanity and actually getting what you want.
If you don’t, well…either you might be seen as someone runnin’ around with dynamite, or you might just be pulling your hair worrying about things you really just can’t control.
And control is the root of what governance is actually about. What you decide to try to control with your activity and behavior…vs. what you decide you either can’t, or don’t want to.
Once you do, then you’re in the driver’s seat, and you’re actually, by self-selection or delegation, the Accountable party for your own results.
And it’s what you do – and the systems you choose to put in place – that make all the difference to what you get.
And that means, it’s about making decisions.
If you’d like to understand some of the decisions that need to be made to help you and your team have the best chance of delivering the mission and purpose of security, then you might be interested in what’s in the pages of the upcoming December issue of the print Security Sanity™ newsletter. But to get it, you need to make sure you’re subscribed before it gets shipped out at the end of the month.
To do that, you’ll need to go here:
Or, you and Allison can belly up to the bar, have a drink and talk about all the ways nothing’s gonna be alright. It’s always your choice.
Stay safe,
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
