David Rubens is a singular consultant and trainer with quite a background and with much to say. He lunched with Mark Rowe.
Why a Japanese name for his consultancy? His company name Meido on his notepaper is written in the western alphabet and Japanese ideograms. Why Japan, for a man who left Israel in 1981 days after his military service and hasn’t been back since, and who has been around the world?
Goa
“I was a hippy,” he recalls. He was travelling, he was in India; at Goa, he got to know a Japanese man; on the beach he saw two people practising aikido. He found it beautiful; so attractive in fact that he went to Tokyo. A Google search under the words ‘Meido’ and ‘Rubens’ comes up with a photo of a younger-looking and darker-haired David (to be fair, we all were in 1986) in martial arts whites, during his four and a half years in Tokyo. He was first a live-in student taking a Japanese instructors’ course (with members of the Tokyo riot police) then a live-in assistant instructor. While such study is not unprecedented for a western man, suffice to say that the Japanese do not take on just anybody. David was awarded his fourth Dan in Tokyo in 1990.
London
On his return to London, David founded the Meidokan Dojo in 1991. Still based in London, Kilburn to be exact, on his CV is the training of thousands of door staff in Westminster in the days of local authority door licence schemes, before the SIA. These days he is running terrorism awareness and crisis management seminars. The next are at the Midland Hotel, Manchester (November 28-29); Hilton Hotel, Birmingham NEC (December 1-2) and London Hyatt Churchill Hotel (5-6). He’s done a masters degree in security and risk management at the University of Leicester. Subject of dissertation: how to respond to as yet unknown threats in terrorism planning for public spaces. He’s one of the organisers of a conference in London from November 21 to 23 on Russian energy sector security. And he is looking to return to Japan offering security consultancy to Japanese corporations.
After July
He was quoted in the August issue of Professional Security after the July 7 bombs. Briefly, his message: worse is to come. He quotes an Israeli security saying: we cannot control the motivation; we can control the opportunity. In other words, you can’t stop the terrorist thinking fanatically, but you can do things to protect the places the terrorist may look to attack. David says: “Everyone is a target; no-one can say it doesn’t involve them.” Hence the terror and crisis awareness seminars in the regions. One of the problems: a month say after 7-7 and security managers have other things to deal with. Yet when a crisis happens it’s too late to make any plans. He mentions the recent Hurricane Katrina: the United States knew what would happen, the rain began to fall, yet things went to pot. In the UK: hotels, museums, theatres, all are under pressure and if anything are cutting security budgets. “At the end of the day,” David says, “security is still seen as a cost, not an investment.” What to do then? David makes a case for training the workforce. Because terror is about people against people, the bad guys against the good. However big the security operation, it still comes down to the security bloke in a uniform outside a building. “Who is that person? They are usually under-trained; under-skilled; under-motivated; under-valued; under-paid. And the reason they are doing that job: because they couldn’t get a job as a bus driver and couldn’t get a job painting the local hospital. It’s pretty well the lowest of the low. Do you think I am being unfair to the industry? The thing about the SIA I agree with absolutely is that you have to upskill.”
SOS stuff
It’s easy to see terrorists as mythical, all-powerful people, David says, but to the terrorists, the security services are all-powerful. Crisis, risk, security management; all are well-understood now; and it’s rare that security managers will face a problem they have never come up against. Mostly, it’s, SOS security – to be polite, Same Old Stuff.
Research
He describes research to do with his MSc: “ … something very interesting from the big American companies. They said: if we cut out the low level crime stuff, the graffiti, the hand-bag snatch, the staff theft, then we cut out terrorism; because these things signify a breakdown in systems management. The terrorist attack isn’t an event. It’s the final stage of a long process.” At each stage there are opportunities to deter. Whether the security is someone standing outside an office or the Houses of Parliament, or a close protection team, “you are trying to create safe territory. If you aren’t in control of your territory then by definition you are reacting to something that has already happened. All of security is about gaining and maintaining and reinforcing control of your own territory, however you define territory. It isn’t difficult. It comes down to understanding human behaviour.” You have two sorts of potential terrorist, David continues. The psychological profile of the amateur: completely paranoid. Profile of the professional: “They will choose the target that will give them maximum benefit.” Control of territory covers customer care, more than security, suggests the case of a hotel that David gives. The hotel was having many complaints from [business] customers about service: morning alarm calls not ’phoned, and so on. Because of the way their desk computers faced, staff in the lobby were looking away from the customers as they approached to complain. This made the complaining customers angrier. Staff were made to face the oncoming customers; that way, they could become more aware of their territory, so that by the time the customer got to the desk, the member of staff was smiling, greeting the customer. Effective. David offers a reminder of the difference between awareness and alertness. You cannot live in a state of alertness; you will burn out, everything looks potentially suspicious, and you will not spot the person who is suspicious. You want to hear more? Well, you will have to go to the Meido seminar.
About Meido
Terrorism awareness seminar guest speaker is Douglas Abbot; he spent 25 years in Special Branch, was for three years special advisor to Lord Robertson, NATO Secretary-General, and was part of the team responsible for the security review of NATO headquarters after 9/11.
