This morning, I ran across the following quote when I was looking for the longer body of a different Rumi quote I saw in my LinkedIn feed from a friend:
“Whoever travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two-day journey.” — Rumi
I know that in my own experience, both personally and professionally, I’ve proven this statement true many times. Sometimes those guides have been in the form of people who were active coaches and mentors, and sometimes those guides have been in the form of books, online courses or audio tapes.
Of course, there are multiple variables to the effectiveness of the particular guide. First, you, as the student must be ready. You need to have hit the point where you feel you’re either stuck or your progress has slowed to the point that you can’t break out of your current thinking.
When I was developing my approach to doing security architecture—or actually, even further back, when I was looking for ways to do “real” architecture as a software developer, I had to figure out a lot of it on my own. I devoured books, I read academic papers, I read standards, and, by the nature of what they were, none of them were really connected or had a unifying theory behind them.
That glue had to come from me, and it took a really, really…really long time.
And the same was true when I started with SABSA in 2005. I met John Sherwood. I read the book. I worked from it and integrated what I could into my enterprise and solution architectures. I learned Foundation directly from David, like you might have too, and I had access to John Sherwood, and these were fantastic resources that shortened my own path to actually knowing what I was doing quite considerably.
But then what happened was that things kinda slowed down. For the next 8 years or so, I made some refinements – and I had some insights – but the majority of the way I approached security architecture or applying SABSA was pretty-much the same.
That is, until I found a new guide—but it wasn’t a guide about security. In fact it was Jim Camp, the negotiation guy and ex-Vietnam era fighter pilot, and the way he talked about mastering complex things that really changed the way I thought about architecture—and SABSA in particular. It’s what made me start searching for what, after 14 years of practice, eventually became The Agile Security System™.
It’s a system, because it has rules and laws that are defined by the 7 core Principles, and it has 14 habits, so that when you master them and you use the tools provided by the Baseline Perspectives, no matter how stressful the situation or how tired you are, or how insurmountable the task before you seems, you’re always safe in the system.
Now, I grant you that 14 years is a damn sight short of 200, but if you’d prefer your own path to be closer to the 2 days above than the 200 years trying to build your own—while trying keep up with 50-60 hour weeks, mountains of “can you just take a look at this?” requests and not lose your sanity, then maybe I can help you the same way other people have helped me.
There’s just about 6 working weeks left for most people before their holiday breaks, depending on where you are in the world, so if you’d like to get some additional help before the year is over, then maybe our Effective Security Bootcamp program is the right choice for you.
It’s 6 weeks of 30 minute sessions where we work together to identify and address specific gaps or skills you’d like to further develop and then I give you the specific guidance you need to apply and practice those skills to make you a better security professional—whether it’s related to risk assessments or security architecture.
Between the sessions, you get basically unlimited email support for us to continue to solve problems, provide guidance and feedback or recommend and share additional resources and templates that are the best fit for what you’re trying to do.
It’s not the ideal arrangement for everyone. However, what I want to stress here is that it’s helping you do the work you’re already doing in a better, more effective way—it’s not specific training that takes time out of your day which you later have to figure out how – or if you can or should – apply it to the tasks you face.
If you want to finish the 6 week program before the end of the year, you basically have to decide to act between now and Tuesday. You schedule a call with this link:
https://archistry.com/go/SecurityBootcamp
And then we have a chat about what you want to do, and make sure that it fits in the scope of the program. If it does, then you get a $900 discount over the normal cost of the program if you pay in full, or you can pay in two installments of $1,398. You’ll need to be ready to get started with the first call next week, however.
Again, it’s not the right program for everyone, and it might not be the right time of the year for you. If it is, then great. Book your call over the weekend so we can get started next week.
As my friend on LinkedIn said about her own battle, “If you can’t beat ‘em, you’re not trying hard enough.” And I think there’s a lot of truth in that.
If you’re in your own fight to make your work better, easier, more effective or just more enjoyable and consistent and just aren’t getting the results you’d like, then maybe it’s time to ask for a bit of help.
Stay safe,
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
