Before we get into the meat of this topic, it might be well to mention what this is all about. Some of you may recognize my name from the periodic articles that Security Technology and Design has had the temerity to publish on Competitive Intelligence and Counterintelligence in business. Usually, these articles have been found in the Security Consultant’s corner feature that ST&D has been running, with the contributions of some members of the International Association of Professional Security Consultants (IAPSC).

Yet, last month, Steve Lasky and his faithful Indian companion Keemo-Fred Wessells asked me to consider writing a regular column. When I asked them what they wanted me to write about, they pawed the ground a little before coming up with "Well, basically, whatever you’d like to write about." Like any consultant, I’m driven to defining a task before ever undertaking it, so I pressed a little further. The only answer I was able to really get from them came from Fred: "Why don’t you try some sit-down comedy. You know, the kind of stuff that Security Managers will take to the porcelain reading room". I’m still struggling a little about whether I should attempt to become ST&D’s answer to Dave Barry. I think Steve might be too.

In any event, you’ll be hearing from me fairly regularly from now on. Maybe you’ll just want to take this as a voice of warning.

And now, on to the title topic.

Ptui! The exaggerated sound of spitting. Normally used as the sound immediately preceding words used in business conversations such as Consultant, Lawyer, OSHA, and government contractor, to name just a few. A sound designed to show the speaker’s disdain for the offending personality. You’ve probably heard it: "Dang, it looks like it’s time that we hired a ptui! Consultant to help us with this Y2K thing!"

Yet in the past couple of years, there seems to be a movement, maybe even a trend, toward reducing the amount of spit that’s wasted on consultants. It seems to me that there are really quite a few reasons for this change.

And quite a change it is. When I began my own consulting career too many years ago, business leaders spoke of consultants in one of two ways. On one hand, their pet stable of consultants was made up of the smartest people who ever wore hair. On the other, they were the people that all-knowing senior managers warned their underlings about -- sort of the way that young military officers are warned by their superiors about enlisted men having "a low and dangerous cunning," to quote George Washington. By far, consultants who didn’t come in through the board room -- as some of the strategist types from the boutique consultancies did -- were consigned to this fate of suspicion, derogation and bare tolerance. So, what has caused this change? And, why in the dickens should any of you busy people bother to read the musings of one of those lower life forms, a security consultant?

Because it may be in your best interest to spend a minute. Maybe even a minute that might impact your future, either in your current position or in the one you haven’t completely decided on yet.

To my fevered mind, there actually are a couple of cogent reasons for this growing acceptance of consultants, particularly security consultants.

The first reason is that there are some awfully good, awfully smart people coming into the consulting world today as a result of downsizing, right-sizing, wrong-sizing and cap-sizing. This includes those stellar senior managers and directors who led significant security organizations in the business world and had turned over the reins to those whom they’d grown to take their positions. Senior security professionals whose competencies were very broad, and often quite deep. People who had earned their spurs in senior corporate or government positions and whose competency, professionalism and reputations suggested that if they needed to have a life after the career, selling consulting services appears as the clear choice. A choice that, hopefully, will include outcomes such as independence, decent compensation and, to paraphrase the astronaut, slipping those surly bonds of the corporation.

A corollary to this is that another whole group of practitioners with somewhat less stellar skills and reputations were caught up in the "what has he done for me today" process of deciding who goes and who stays in other downsizing activities. To a large extent, this latter group contributed largely to their own availability in the marketplace through a lack of appreciation for the changing dynamics of the Turn of the Century business environment. More about that in a minute.

The second reason that consulting doesn’t have the same kind of bad sound -- in the security profession especially -- is because of the exceptional growth of internal consulting within companies. A phenomenon that some have called intrapreneurship -- a style of professional operation that is proactive, aggressive, anticipatory and business oriented. It’s this kind of a situation where internal security professionals actually take on the characteristics of a security consultant while still fully and gainfully employed. An internal security consultant who has taken a few sips from the Marketing Fountain of Youth. From the what?

Well, yeah. The Marketing Fountain of Youth. Using internal marketing activities, just as an external consultant lives or dies by the success he or she has in making the telephone ring. Internal marketing activities that allow people in the organization to know who you are, what you can actually do, what you’ve actually done for them in a dollars and sense way. Internal marketing that allows you to literally sell your competencies to people who didn’t really know they needed what you were offering. Internal marketing that allows you the opportunity for long -- even if not eternal -- life inside the company.

After all, that’s really Marketing 101 isn’t it? Creating the demand and then satisfying it? Recognizing a previously unrecognized need across business units or departments; listening to those internal "customers;" and, developing products and services that are market-driven. We all remember the sad tale of the buggy whip manufacturers from our earliest business courses, right? Those companies that said "We’re going to continue to build the best possible buggy whips and people will continue to beat a path to our door." Those companies that failed to recognize just how popular the internal combustion engine was going to be when placed inside a vehicle previously only drawn by horses. An internal marketing orientation that transfers directly into the "outside world" as a fundamental and necessary ingredient for the professional security consultant who hangs his shingle outside the company.

And, there’s more to it than the marketing angle. There’s the internal consultant who has to price his security services to the various departments, groups or operating companies in order to get a return on the firm’s investment in his people, equipment, skills, and other assets. An internal consultant who has to understand the elements of pricing -- the overhead, the G&A costs, the allocation and management of resources according to the job, measured against what each of the employees working on the project actually costs, and so on. Perhaps equal in importance and value to the internal marketing orientation, the understanding of how to price and what to price in the way of services contributes materially to the ability of the outside security professional to keep his child bride in jewels and Godiva chocolates.

Lest we forget another one of those spin-offs that are allowing -- almost encouraging -- the security professional to pull the pin and get out on his own after success as an internal consultant: providing security services to outside customers as well as internal customers. I know of at least fifty different companies where over the past decade their leadership has successfully challenged them to sell their security consulting services to other, non-competing companies. Another, more aggressive approach to building a profit center that replaces the old "security as a cost-center" paradigm.

It’s some of these very same internal consultants who see how competent they really are, appreciate just how much they are really worth, and who understand just how much of a market there is for their services who are laying the groundwork for their own consultancy of the future. And, of course, sometimes that future is closer than we always think. Especially those who’ve been so beaten up by their mean-eyed teenagers saying "Dad, your future is behind you," that they didn’t realize they even had a future.

The IAPSC has also been an example of this shift. More and more new members come out of the corporate world because they’ve lived in a business incubator of sorts that prepared them for such a life. Out of a corporate world that’s prepared them emotionally and financially, and most of all, professionally. In fact, there has been such an identifiable shift that the IAPSC has even changed one of its core programs and is moving toward some organizational changes to take environmental changes into account.

As just one example, Gerry O’Rourke’s fine development seminar "How To Become a Successful Security Consultant" continues to attract those who are embarking on a security consulting career without having really been prepared by their previous experiences. It’s held twice a year -- once at the IAPSC annual meeting and once at the ASIS meeting.

Now that there is more and more of a push to provide those skills that are necessary to succeed as internal professional security consultants as well, the IAPSC has developed one to help those who have to learn additional management and consultative skills to continue making contributions inside their own organizations. To the extent that those skills translate directly to external consulting work at later point in their careers is just one of those advantages of life in the Big City.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not shilling for the IAPSC. It’s just that when you see certain trends developing, things that are likely to have an impact on the security landscape, and things that others might profit from knowing about, it just seemed to be important enough to spend a little while writing about. Even if I don’t see any changes on the horizon for lawyers. Maybe, just maybe, they were the reason that the Lord invented saliva.

Or maybe I’m just focusing on that 99% of lawyers who give the rest of them a bad name.

About the author: John A. Nolan, III CPP, OCP is Chairman and Managing Director of Phoenix Consulting Group, which provides competitive intelligence, counterintelligence and professional development/training programs across a variety of industries. He is also a co-founder of The Centre for Operational Business Intelligence in Sarasota, FL where corporate intelligence practitioners from around the country and the world learn the tools and techniques necessary to prevail in the marketplace. His newest book, “CONFIDENTIAL”:Uncover Your Competitor's Top Secrets Legally and Quickly - And Protect Your Own was released by HarperCollins Business Books in June 1999. He is frequently featured in national and international media such as Forbes, George, Times of London and CNN, to name just a few. He can be reached at jnolan@intellpros.com, or at 1.800.440.1724.