Using SNA to map critical skills, expertise, and communication in a corporate security department

The security directors of multinational companies must manage risks related to physical security, business continuity, intellectual property protection, local corruption and crisis response, among others. Given that many MNC's are now larger economic entities than some countries, managing these types of threats at the corporate level is becoming comparable to running the security of a small country.

 

How can SNA help a corporate security department whose success relies on cross-department and international collaboration?

Hypothesis: SNA will help the department (1) know what its resources are in the first place; (2) Facilitate collaboration by bringing together resources that should be connected sooner.

The ultimate goal is to make the company more prepared for and resilient against crisis situations.

Data required: 

The data-collection phase should begin with an assessment of the skills that are critical to the corporate security department achieving its goals. What kind of people should the department have inside it? Speak to frequently? Have access to?

I anticipate surveying along the following attributes and connection topics:

1.     Identifying and defining your resources:

a.     Identifying attributes:

                                               i.     Department

                                              ii.     Location

                                            iii.     Gender

                                            iv.     Title

                                              v.     Age

b.     Experience attributes:

                                               i.     Years with company

                                              ii.     Undergraduate degree

                                            iii.     Graduate degree

                                            iv.     Journalism

                                              v.     Law enforcement

                                            vi.     Military

                                           vii.     Government

                                         viii.     Law

                                            ix.     Academia

                                              x.     Corporate security

                                            xi.     Residence in countries where the business has operations

c.      Skill attributes:

                                               i.     Languages

                                              ii.     Certifications (CFE, CAMS, PPI, etc.)

                                            iii.     Investigations

                                            iv.     Security consulting

                                              v.     Political risk analysis

d.     Expertise attributes:

                                               i.     Industries (oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, mining, legal, etc.)

                                              ii.     Regions (Middle East, South Asia, etc.)

                                            iii.     Issues that matter to critical business functions or corporate strategy (business continuity, travel security, corruption, problem solving etc.)

2.     Describing the existing network:

a.     Patterns of communication:

                                               i.     Have never communicated

                                              ii.     Communicate with occasionally (once per week or less, group meetings)

                                            iii.     Communicate with frequently (more than once per week)

b.     Patterns of collaboration:

                                               i.     Have worked with on a client engagement in the past year

                                              ii.     Have not worked with on a client engagement in the past year

Important network measures:

• Network density: Cross-departmental collaboration on project work (density of networks on issues/regions/collaborations that make sense, such as Middle East political analysis, oil & gas security)
• Ego networks: which employees do the best job of connecting departments on projects.
• Organizational holes: lack of personnel with attributes necessary to satisfy specific corporate requirements; missing connections between employees who should be speaking more frequently (is there a security analyst with years of experience in China but now based in Wisconsin who has never spoken with the China country manager?)

What will this help the company do?

Ideally, the SNA will result in intelligence that allows the department to:

• Create more effective project teams.
• Identify people who aren’t talking who should be.
• Identify areas where the company is over or under-resourced on critical skills and personnel.
• Identify organizational vulnerabilities (bottlenecks; central people who if removed would have a significant negative effect on the company’s ability to get things done).