Global risks, both man-made and natural, are an inevitable companion of and byproduct to today’s constant global change. The retail environment is far from immune from these risks. Instead, major brands must focus on and emphasize preparedness and protection for its people and assets.
Francis D’Addario, Dean Correia, and Sean Dettloff have a strong familiarity with this mission. In the 1990s, all three joined Starbucks’ asset protection organization with the goal of boosting the brand’s all-hazards risk resilience. D’Addario, Correia, and Dettloff share the illuminating story of the growth and change within Starbucks’ AP organization in a feature article for the July—August issue of LP Magazine. From the article:
The AP services grew organically, leveraging subject-matter risk experts and retail operational talent. Like many others in the retail security world of that time, we were schooled by the catastrophes that included the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent anthrax attacks, the Boxing Day Tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands along the Indian Ocean, Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath along the Gulf of Mexico, the Nisqually earthquake in the Northwest US region, and several workplace homicides that took the lives of Starbucks partners. Add to these a couple of multimillion-dollar internal breaches that were sufficiently mitigated to preclude material loss.
All these critical events were gut-wrenching. All were relatively predictable. Insiders committed some directly under the nose of the AP organization. All prompted incremental protection-in-depth improvements. Most were leveraged for service growth, culturally aligned with value priorities beginning with people protection and ending with profit assurance.
In the article, the authors, who are now faculty members of the Security Executive Council (SEC), call for LP leadership to understand the imperative need for risk resilience. Check out “LP Leaders of the Future?” to read the full article.
NOTE: The SEC is currently undertaking a benchmarking survey of LP and AP professionals, risk managers, and contracted solutions providers to develop a next-generation leadership baseline. Your participation is appreciated. To complete the survey, visit securityexecutivecouncil.com/lpsec2017.
You can also read the other articles in the July—August 2017 issue of LP Magazine by going to the Table of Contents. Not yet subscribed? No problem – register here for free.