Volume 17

The need for introjection in the security industry.

Coming off a family night out to the theater and on a recent podcast I was listening to, I heard something that stopped me cold and changed how I viewed what was happening in our industry.

It was a story about concert halls. I know. Concert halls?

After reflecting on what I heard, I came to the conclusion that I always thought the obvious reason one concert hall was better than the other was how they handled the acoustics. I always thought the critical component was amplifying and delivering the sound to the people listening. It was about how loud or how the sounds reflect that mattered.

This podcast flipped all of that. The podcast explained that how well they create silence makes one concert hall superior to the other.

Hold on…Silence?

Think about that… it is not the sound you hear that makes for a better concert hall. It’s what you don't hear that makes what you hear more meaningful.

Reflecting on that interesting fact, I am reminded of how many in our industry speak about new things.

Whether it's mobile, cloud, or new channels, there's always a lot of noise about what can go wrong. And because this noise is so loud, you may start to believe that it represents the truth, even if that's not necessarily the case.

Sometimes it is what you don’t hear regarding the change that needs to be highlighted, discussed, and brought into the discussion.

It is easy to take the obvious route of negativity, especially if you are comparing one thing new to something old. Since the old is well defined and understood, you can easily speak to what could go wrong. But what's harder is thinking through the unknown. The secondary effects. The positive impacts.

Please do not take what I am saying here as a cheerleader of hype or blinded optimism. I staunchly believe we need a good balance of critical thinking. This includes what could go wrong and what could go right.

But what I bristle at are visceral knee-jerk reactions to anything new based on retrofobia. Let’s take cloud computing, the access control industry, and integrators.

The simple, obvious, and surface way to position the impact cloud has on our industry is “net negative,” especially for integrators.

Sure, there are changes that are made to products, business, and relationships, but net negative?

Don’t Confuse Concern with Net Negative

A byproduct of change is a concern. Some concern is valid and even healthy. We should also have some skepticism. But concern can quickly move to fear and usually shows up as binary thinking, NIMBY’insim, and provocative headlines.

Recently we have seen an uptick in those negative manifestations, and no one is louder than John Honovich, founder of IPVM. At the recent PSA TEC, John took part in a panel discussion on The State of the Industry and expounded that, in summary, “cloud is a net negative to integrators because it gives manufacturers more control.” If the negative community could have a rallying cry or a billboard, it would say, “Cloud is net negative because of [fill in the blank].”

This is unfortunate because all this negative and closed-mindedness gets in the way of progress and success. For some reason, the loud underbelly of dissenters of the change believes that everything “new” to our industry means that it must be “new” to every industry and has done little to no work in looking around. They show a dire lack of curiosity and then speak with authority. They believe we are some special unicorn or somehow “different” or unaffected by the outside world where we could never find parallels or learnings to see how we could effectively use these new changes to grow, change, add, or reimagine the art of the possible. They seem to believe there are no external examples or industries we can study or look for relatable ways to approach or maybe learn what not to do.

Instead, they look inward. They look to protect. They put their guard up and seek others who share their views to bring them comfort (and sell subscriptions). In some cases, they even get indignant, doubling down and desire echo chambers versus engaging in a civilized conversation or debate.

Why? Because change is hard. Change has a level of the unknown. Change challenges people. Challenge threatens institutional norms.

And this is especially true and heightened when that change is a digital transformation.

Digital Transformation: The Ultimate Challenge

With a digital transformation, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is impacted. But the impact is also random and, in some cases, sequenced. It is not an absolute change that happens all at the same time that comes along with a manual with step by step guidelines on how to cope. It is both fast and slow, broad and narrow. You will find pockets where the digital transformation is not happening while at the same time deeply disrupting other areas.

So, of course, digital transformation also reflects both good and bad. Like any change, for example, the internet, mobile phones, and even the steam engine, you find areas of massive prosperity and opportunity, along with disruption and change.

That is why I believe we need to do two things.

First, we need to recognize that this is nuanced. It is not binary, and because of that, we need to stop binary thinking. We need recognize those that lack curiosity and desire to get into the nuances.

Second, we need to challenge the legacy thinking with their stylish hoodwinks and ask that they look further than the iteration or reflections of internal past changes. Even if it means they won’t sell as many memberships.

This leads me to ask, why do we ignore other industries and believe “we can’t” when “we should?”

Introjection

Introjection is the process of absorbing the qualities and ideas of others.

Let’s continue the conversation on integrators.

Another talk track of the “retrofobians” (I made that word up, but you get the point) is that our industry integrators can never be enterprise software system integrators (SIs) or even independent software vendors (ISVs).

Never? Really? Why not?

I don’t get it.

I understand that some won’t, but saying that it will never and can’t seems overly dramatic to me.

And even if that was slightly true, if we assume the following:

1. Coming out of the pandemic, we are in the midst of an accelerated digital transformation.

2. Software is becoming more prevalent in our industry.

3. Customer demand is increasing for software solutions.

4. Middleware, applications, and platforms are integrating with our legacy systems.

5. The value proposition (perceived and desired) goes beyond keeping bad people out, locking, and unlocking to operational efficiencies, revenue generation, and overall work tech in most vertical markets such as commercial real estate, multifamily, and enterprise.

Why wouldn’t we pick our heads up, look around to other industries serving these markets and say, “Hey! You over there. There are some similarities to our businesses. Can we share some ideas instead of just discussing how your system can work with ours? I’d like to understand things a bit better.”

I wholeheartedly believe two things will 100% happen because they are already happening:

1. Some security integrators will start to become system integrators and ISVS, where they sell, install, develop, and support access control software and broader enterprise software solutions such as Salesforce or ServiceNow.

2. Some enterprise system integrators and ISVs will start to become security integrators, where they sell, install, develop, and support broader enterprise software solutions such as Salesforce or ServiceNow and access control software and hardware.

I believe this has a bigger impact than our conversations around IT and physical security convergence.

Who knows, maybe we will see some interesting M&A or consolidation happen.

So instead of burying our heads in the sand, defending our old hills, and working overtime to keep things how they have been for the past 30 years, let's have the AND conversations.

Where to start? Look to Salesforce for inspiration.

We can have the best of both worlds. We just need the desire to do so.

We will be bringing the Access Control Village to CREtech New York. If interested in being part of it, let me know. There is a limited amount of space so please let me know.

Tickets Are Now On Sale for the Access Control Summit 2023!

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