Leadership Foundations and the Concept of Planning for Executive Protection

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Framing the Topic: Leadership and Planning for Executive Protection

Knowing what to do is not the same thing as knowing when, where, and how to do it; similarly, knowing what you want to achieve is not the same thing as structuring various ways to accomplish that goal – both of these problems are alleviated by sound leadership and effective planning.

Executive protection is a dynamic endeavor – times and personnel numbers can change frequently, mission-specific information can be difficult to obtain, the exact reason for the executive protection detail can be misunderstood or misarticulated in the telephone game of subcontracting, and uncontrollable exogenous variables such as crime and weather conditions must be accounted for.

It is also true that high-end executive protection services are implemented by a number of executive protection providers – major duty of care firms, proprietary executive protection programs, and solo practitioners who collaborate and/or subcontract on an ad-hoc basis to support corporate clients and competitors all provide executive protection services. 

But no matter what, at some point in time, formal executive protection team leaders are established, informal leaders can emerge, and someone plans to get the job done.

The Foundations of Leadership in Executive Protection

Defining Leadership

While there may be no single correct definition of leadership, Army Doctrinal Publication (ADP) 5-0 provides us with an adequate way of framing what leadership is in the context of executive protection: “Leadership is the activity of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.”  In short, leadership is about individuals influencing an outcome through focusing efforts on an end goal.

Levels of Leadership in Executive Protection

Direct Leadership in EP: This is the most common form of leadership in executive protection teams, and involves face-to-face interactions with team members.  This level of leadership is relatively simple and easy to manage, making it ideal for smaller executive protection details or programs.  In this context, leadership is exerted through one-on-one interactions and indirectly through subordinates, but the span of a leader’s influence generally does not extend beyond a few dozen people.

Organizational Leadership in EP: As executive protection operations grow in scale and complexity, leaders must navigate more intricate organizational structures and balance the needs of various stakeholders.  In this context, leadership is exerted indirectly through levels of subordinates and can extend to hundreds or thousands of people.

Forms of Leadership in Executive Protection

Formal Leadership in EP: This is an assigned position within a detail or organization that denotes responsibility.  Generally speaking, holding the titles manager, director, or team leader denotes a formal leadership position in an executive protection setting.

Informal Leadership in EP: This is an emergent phenomenon that is often based on initiative and experience, regardless of holding a formal position.  Take the case of a small executive protection detail, where a company executive decided to bring in a contractor to support a specific requirement.  An employee of the executive protection firm may hold the official title of Team or Detail Leader, but if the contractor’s experience far exceeds that of the formal team leader, there may be a time when members of the detail defer to the contracted third-party support for certain decision-making functions.

Collective Leadership in EP: This is when multiple leaders work in concert with one another and are aligned by a common purpose.  This often occurs when multiple executive protection teams from different companies must  collaborate in some form to accomplish a specific detail.  In this context, there may be no centralized, or hierarchical, decision-making authority and the collective executive protection leaders need to deconflict or develop joint plans.

The Concept of Planning for Executive Protection

Defining Planning

Planning is likewise a nebulous and difficult to define term.  Again, we will defer to ADP 5-0 and frame planning as “…the art and science of understanding a situation, envisioning a desired future, and determining effective ways to bring that future about.”  In short, planning is about determining the material ways to make a desired end goal a reality.

Guides to Effective Planning in Executive Protection

Leaders are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of any protection detail.  In order to ensure the detail is a success, executive protection leaders should utilize several guidelines:

Leaders focus the planning efforts: Again, success or failure is ultimately the responsibility of the executive protection detail leader.  Planning efforts should reflect the leadership’s vision of success, and the leader is solely responsible for ensuring that the team’s efforts are nested with the broader client and organizational requirements.

Develop simple (but not simplistic) and flexible plans: Understanding is generated through the development of clear, concise, uncomplicated executive protection plans.  As a heuristic, the greater the complexity in a system or plan, the greater the probability of failure.  Because executive protection is a dynamic endeavor, opportunities for initiative at the level of the executive protection agent should be built into the plan to ensure flexibility.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the plan should clearly convey the mission and intent of the detail – the reason for the detail (the mission statement), and the leader’s vision of success (the intent statement) are what provide the ultimate north star to drive success and agent autonomy.

Optimize available planning time: Leaders should allocate 1/3 of the time available for their planning, and 2/3 of the time available for team and/or subordinate planning and preparation.  Ultimately, there is no substitute for rehearsals, and planning alone does not produce results – implementing them does, and reinforcing the specific actions required for implementation is what makes the detail successful.

Focus on the correct planning horizon: Planning horizons are based on end-state certainty, and generally categorized as (1) long-term, (2) mid-term, and (3) short-term.

Long-term: These plans will be broad, concept-based, and theoretic; leaders must plan for numerous circumstances as well as evolving internal and external variables.

Mid-term: These plans are concept-based, but gradually refined as more information becomes available. An example of this is a tentative request to support a company shareholder meeting in six months.  You know it will happen, and you can sketch the outline of a plan, but more information is needed to make the plan more comprehensive and a number of items may change prior to the actual execution of the executive protection detail.

Short-term: This is where most small group leaders operate – such executive protection detail leaders.  In the short-term planning horizon, the mission or detail is going to happen in the near future and at a specific time, or around a specific time, and you can make detailed plans to prepare for it.  An example of this is an ad hoc airport transfer that is occurring two days from the requested date.

Executive Protection Planning Pitfalls

These planning pitfalls are not necessarily specific to executive protection.  That being said, it is important to recognize that executive protection companies  – both large and small – are particularly vulnerable to many of these pitfalls because of experiential and group dynamics.

Planning Pitfall 1: Attempting to forecast and dictate events too far into the future – the further away an event is from the present, the more potential futures that exist; it is impossible to develop intricate plans for all of them. 

Planning Pitfall 2: Using the plan as a script for execution – clients can change their minds, vehicles can break down, crowds can materialize without much notice, and your plan should be flexible enough to accommodate these contingencies in the abstract.

Planning Pitfall 3: Institutionalizing rigid planning processes – many executive protection details require outside the box thinking that overly structured planning processes simply will not account for.

Planning Pitfall 4: Too much planning detail – this can simply be a waste of time, leave plans too inflexible to be adaptable, and too much detail detracts from overall understanding of the plan.

Planning Pitfall 5: Groupthink and false analogies – history is littered with the catastrophes of consensus for social reasons and the tragedies of action because of faulty mental models.  Leaders should encourage a diversity of opinion and carefully evaluate if their current understanding of the world is accurate.

Influencing Others and Focusing Executive Protection Planning Efforts

The bottom line is this: leaders influence, focus planning efforts, and maintain enough self-awareness to avoid pitfalls and leverage the strength of their teams.  By understanding the various levels and forms of leadership, as well as implementing sound planning principles, executive protection leaders can navigate complex scenarios with confidence and protect their clients.  Planning should be simple and flexible, and executive protection providers should implement planning systems that enable agent autonomy during detail execution.