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Author: Charles “Chuck” Randolph, Jonathan Wackrow and Fred Burton
ISBN No: 9781041136231
Review date: 19/07/2026
No of pages: 278
Publisher: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis
Publisher URL:
https://www.routledge.com/The-Protectors-Edge-Leadership-Through-Strategy-and-Action/Randolph-Wackrow-Burton/p/book/9781041136231
Year of publication: 03/07/2026
Brief:
The Protector’s Edge: Leadership Through Strategy and Action
price
£29.59
As set out at the very beginning, protective security has gone beyond bodyguards or even operational security management: ‘today’s protectors are trusted advisors, strategic risk leaders, and organizational influencers’. In other words, the ops (while ever more complex and demanding, as the authors acknowledge) might be taken as read; the threats are not only physical and digital, but ‘reputational, and narrative’. The protective security person must not only stay abreast of their own field, and its tech, but ‘business cycles, communications, and decision pressure’ faced by the overall business.
The authors, who are three distinguished and articulate Americans in the field of security management, describe protection as ‘a strategic capability, one that strengthens leadership, continuity, and resilience’. They open by suggesting that we’re at a turning point, like the late 1960s and early 1970s; which calls for ‘a shift in mindset: from guarding to anticipating, from responding to interpreting, from protection as a function to protection as leadership’. Put another way, the old reliance on a ‘holy trinity’ of guards, gates and (at least in the United States) guns, which suffices against such threats as stalkers, disgruntled employees and assassins, won’t do ‘in an era of asymmetric and hybrid dangers’, that include cyberspace and industrial espionage. As the authors point out, ‘a CEO might face not only a physical stalker but also a social media smear campaign that inspires such behaviour’. An example the authors give early on is the 2022 acquisition by Elon Musk of Twitter, now X; ‘activists publicly posted his home address, details about family members, and real‑time travel routes across multiple platforms’. As the authors add, this act of doxxing, ‘the malicious release of personal information’, not only posed a threat to Musk’s personal safety, but affected some investors. It’s a job, as the authors spell out, for multiple departments; cyber, to look into the leak of data; public relations (PR) to make ‘factual rebuttals’ to repair any damage to reputation; and legal, to ‘pursue takedowns of the sensitive information’ and maybe take legal action against those behind the leaks. In a word, convergence.
Enabling
Protection, then, like the online world, has to happen at speed; and be as at home with flight tracking data and ‘digital footprint’ as posting guards and drawing up patrol routes. The shooting dead of a US executive in New York in December 2024, Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, looms large here and is quoted as early as page seven. The book – sub-titled, Leadership Through Strategy and Action – like so many by Americans draws heavily on American examples and sources, albeit outstanding ones, such as the retired general turned writer Stanley Chrystal. The authors aren’t suggesting novel things: they write of speaking the language of business, ‘to enable the business, not encumber it’. In other words, a security person has to accept less than perfection; just as other functions must, we might add. The authors are right that perfectionism, while necessary when carrying out close protection on a VIP, can be a hindrance in business; products can leave a factory with faults; a train can set off with litter in the carriage. The non-security executives may understand risk, but only in terms of how it affects what really motivates them: value, growth, continuity (so that the business keeps making money), and brand equity. The protective security head’s job is to frame options; enable ‘informed decisions’. All that implies gathering of intelligence, shared as ‘internal updates so every team member, from the newest analyst to the most senior advisor, understands the changing landscape’.
Burnout
Some problems arise with this, leaving aside the civic question of whether the multi-national corporates being protected are too big, and over-powerful. Internally, are corporates healthy to work in; one of the book’s dozen chapters is about ‘mental health and burnout’. The authors have many sensible things to say about how to avoid burnout, in yourself and among colleagues, such as ‘a mindset of compassion’. Yet do corporates practice what the authors are preaching? The authors write of how many practitioners ‘admit, in private if not in public, to having lived for years inside a cycle of suppression: even when rest was desperately needed, they kept going, haunted by the suspicion that stepping back would mean losing favour’.
Uber example
One problem is that protective security will still be bedevilled by the fact that an absence of crisis, or lower stock loss or fewer assaults on staff, are ‘silent victories’, that may be either taken for granted or even treated as excuses to cut the security department. Another problem is the documented case of the Uber (not mentioned by the authors) chief security officer (CSO) who got collared by the US federal authorities for a cyber security breach or failure. Yet software for a platform will never be perfect, given the rush for market share (and remember, the authors are arguing for resilience, rather than perfection). Why should a CSO take the blame for bad coding by programmers, which can never be entirely resolved and which AI in the hands of hostiles might sniff out ever faster, making a lack of leaks and breaches even less likely?
New model
The authors argue for ‘a new model’, whereby ‘credibility grows not from hiding mistakes but from owning them’. Credibility may grow, but what if that credibility only makes the US regulator the SEC go for you, rather than another executive?! A security team, cyber or real-world, may indeed admit to a mistake and inculcate in recruits a culture of trust; but how will that trust fare, when Security is liaising (as the authors recommend) with PR, legal, human resources and so on, each with their own leaders and ‘mission’ as they see it, and departmental budgets, reputation and personal pensions to protect?
Table of contents
Section I: The Landcape of Leadership. 1. Leading in the New Risk Landscape 2. From Executive Protection to Executive Presence 3. Defining Leadership in the Protection Profession 4. Leadership Mindset: From Reactive to Proactive Section II: The Protector as Leader. 5. The Protectors’ Code 6. Crisis Leadership and Legacy Building 7. Leading Up: Becoming a Trusted Advisor Section III: Sustaining and Scaling Leadership.8. Protecting the Protector: Mental Health and Burnout 9. Intelligence-Led Leadership: Data Informed. Section IV: Leading in the Converged Threat Environment. 10. Leading in the Age of Hybrid Threats 11. Purpose-Driven Leadership 12. The Protector’s Edge
