Yes, You Need To Change

I know: it's not you, it's them. I know: you have degrees from the right 'elite' universities and you've been a techie since MS-DOS and you were the CISO (or CIO or CTO) at Big Co before this Bigger Co job.

Check, check, check.

You need to change.

We've written about change frequently on this site. Sometimes change is getting a certificate. Sometimes change is getting the Board to see things your way. Sometimes it's about motivating your team. Usually it's about being outside your comfort zone.

Very common action/decision models have at least four parts -- plan, do, check, act; observe, orient, decide, act; etc. Nothing wrong with these and really, whichever works for you is fine.

But there is a psychological process in change that happens before the action process. Sometimes it's in the form of a (pretty good) grim joke -- "change is good, you go first" comes to mind. Let's boil it down so that it's less...change-full.

First, change means loss. You're giving up a previous understanding, way of doing things, or feeling. Friends of mine who have quit smoking talk about it in terms of a tactile and sensory ritual: they used to hold a pack of cigarettes, then there was the feeling of pinching one cigarette, then they held it just so and pucker up on it, then they light it and there was a smell of burning tobacco, then they drew in a breath through the cigarette and there was a taste and sound associated with that draw... Now all that is lost. Never-smokers don't get it; former smokers do.

Second, there was a need to change that was so compelling that you took action. My best guess is that for technologists this need boils down to artificial intelligence (AI). Whatever your thinking about AI being a fad v. the singularity and artificial general intelligence, and regardless of a one-off MIT study on AI implementation failures, the technology is so pervasive that it is a causal reason for change that was more compelling than your inertial default mode of waiting it out. 

Sometimes recognition of the need to change was brought to your attention (we'll talk about that another time) and sometimes it hatched in your brain. Those differ but in both cases you took action of some sort.

Third, you need to develop a mindset that change means gain. Yes, you lost something (ignorance of AI, smoking habits, bad attitudes) but now you're gaining something. Our friend Ken Nowack talks about this in terms of neuroplasticity and habit acquisition through coaching. In brief the only way change is going to 'work' is if you work at it. In our ongoing example, maybe that's taking a certificate course in AI, doing positive movement work (Pilates, yoga, swimming, meditation), or volunteering in your community.

Cybersecurity is constantly evolving in an adversarial loop: good guys start with cybersecurity, then bad guys get better at their game, then good guys get better at their game (right?), then AI scrambles everything. Leading the cybersecurity process means more than buying product platforms and ensuring everyone took their mandatory training and posting pithy cybersecurity hints on company monitors. It means you are a change manager.

Think of the change imperative this way. The Board expects your cybersecurity process to work. You will be fired if it doesn't work. The cybersecurity process won't work if you don't constantly adapt it for business and technology applications that didn't exist back when you were "learning the ropes," a.k.a. last week. 

As we continually discuss here at Pythia, as a cybersecurity leader you need to change up the tech game and you need to step up your leadership game. Be honest: do you actually 100% know what your leadership values, and can you honestly say without reservation that your cybersecurity platform is actually aligned with what leadership and the organization value? Furthermore, again being completely candid, would your answers and your boss' answers to those questions differ?

Change is necessary regardless of whether it's "good." Do it right.

Ask us how you can maximize your change growth journey to achieve even more. 

Check.