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Author: Dr Gavriel Schneider
ISBN No: 979-8-89138-242-8
Review date: 22/06/2026
No of pages: 289
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Publisher URL:
https://amplifypublishinggroup.com/product/bookstore/new-releases/presilience/
Year of publication: 01/05/2025
Brief:
price
£24 dollars
In Presilience, the author Dr Gav Schneider does more than explain the intriguing title; he addresses security-risk things such as situational awareness and personal safety, and crisis management, and takes the reader on an interesting journey besides.
Presilience, the author terms as โall about getting ahead of the curve, changing our game plan from simply reacting to challenges to preparing for them in advance, and finding ways to thrive amid the constant flux around usโ. As you might imagine, the author intends with his term to go beyond resilience, and from early on he takes martial arts as an example โ he took it up from an early age and devoted much time to it as a young man. I did find myself thinking of Dr David Rubens, the security consultant turned founder of the Institute of Strategic Risk Management, who also devoted himself to martial arts as a young man; and sure enough (page 203), the author describes him as a friend (itโs a small world; as an side, Gav is President of the ISRM’s Australian and New Zealand Hub). Just as David has been on quite some journey, which made it possible for him to set up the ISRM, so it has been for Dr Gavriel Schneider; as a bodyguard, including to the rich, powerful and famous; and to Australia, as a consultant, researcher and academic, and an all-round self-confessed โrisk nerdโ.
Presilience, then, may be short for โproactive resilienceโ, but the author suggests itโs more than that; โa combination of not just stopping bad things from happening and preparing to get through them when they do but also changing the mindset and focusing on how you take riskโ.
While the author draws on psychology and neuroscience for resilience inside our heads, he devotes a chapter to the body, arguing that (page 122) โphysical well-being directly affects our capacity to handle stress, make decisions, and respond to challengesโ. I suggest that arguing as he does that being โphysically fit and healthy enough to live your best lifeโ and helps you to โachieve your full potentialโ is at once stating the obvious, and yet so often either is taken for granted or is left by the wayside โ whether because of stress, people turn to drink to self-medicate; or, to achieve commercial targets, people skimp on sleep and exercise. The authorโs argument, then, is that individual well-being โalso contributes to creating healthier, more resilient organizationsโ. Thus this book quotes the Dalai Lama XIV besides the business executives Jack Welch and Richard Branson. Looking after yourself physically shades into protective security in terms of, as the author presents, self-defence and personal safety.
At times, I feel that the author is in truth presenting his approach to life, no more or less. While the bookโs full of help for how any of us can navigate the risks of an ever-faster changing world, how does it fare if you, the presilient manager in a business, come up against others who are there just to be present, from the proverbial 9am to 5pm, and do not sign up to this or any method of living? Or, to be more generous, when faced by people who, bewildered by tech and other change, draw in their horns? Who donโt want a โmissionโ? To stay with private security, if officers are on minimum wage and want a quiet life, to comply with the minimum to stay in a job – how to get them to do things that would take them out of that quiet life? That I suggest requires quite a different book, and there is a โhow toโ literature for that.
The author does address this in his own way, stating that in โambition-driven capitalist societies, the allure of being a standout individual performer is strongโ, and he makes the case for going further, to fostering relationships and nurturing teams. He champions such human things as motivation, and engagement, over training, policies, and strategies โ which is not to decry any of those things, but without โa shared sense of purposeโ (page 220) such words on documents are empty.
The author closes by offering tips for making a personal Presilience plan (PPP), which, he adds, fits with the ISO 31000 risk management process.
If I may summarise, the author makes the case for having emotional intelligence, not ever stopping learning but rather being โhumble and coachableโ; having a sense of ethics (how central that is to the security and risk, and any, managerโs work, yet how few commentators even mention ethics!); in sum, becoming an expert on yourself. While compliance is stuff you have to do, and resilience is what โyou need in place if things go wrongโ, the author defines presilience as โstuff that will stop things from going wrong and improve the opportunities for them to go rightโ. Where I found presilience most helpful, even inspiring, was when it accepted that things can and do go wrong, for ourselves and our workplaces โ we should be โunafraid to encounter setbacksโ (page 239), and equally able to draw lessons from failures as successes.
As for the readership of this book, I would frame it in terms of when you ought to read it, rather than who should. You may want to force yourself to give time to this book, if you are having a successful but busy time, to check that your compass, moral and otherwise, is sound; or, if youโre in doubt about your direction or perish the thought have found yourself out of work, you want to take stock.
