Redefining Security’s Value Proposition After an Acquisition
Change is constant. Some changes are positive, others surprising, and a few will completely throw you off your game. How you adapt to changes will determine your ability to succeed and add value to your organization.
Richard Widup, CPP, worked through a major episode of change when fast-moving consumer goods company Reckitt acquired his employer—infant formula manufacturer Mead Johnson Nutrition—in 2017.
Infant formula manufacturing follows similar rules and regulations as pharmaceutical companies, Widup says, so corporate security was well-integrated into Mead Johnson Nutrition as part of its approach to compliance and regulatory adherence. But consumer goods was an entirely different equation, and Reckitt’s leadership was on the fence about whether the incoming security function would stay or go.
In the final phases of the acquisition, though, world events underscored the value of having a corporate security team on deck. The yellow vest protests and other civil unrest in Europe, terrorism in Kenya, and several workplace violence incidents demonstrated that having a unified security risk management function could bring value to Reckitt, but Widup still faced an uphill battle to continuously counter security’s reputation as a cost center.
The cultural dynamics at Reckitt also came into play. The company acted like Pac-Man, gobbling up smaller companies but not merging them into one unified brand, Widup says. This pitted brands against each other to generate revenue in a “what have you done for me today” model, he adds. Security had to act similarly, constantly looking for the next quick win that could be quantified and used to gain buy-in for the next win.
Although this required political savvy from Widup and his team, as well as constant outreach to other executives, it ended up being a net positive because the security function became more adaptable and better aligned with other business functions.
“It was a wake-up call,” he says. “We got it—this is the way the business operates. If we want to be successful, if we want to be seen as an enterprise-driven organizational element that adds value to the company at all levels, all times, then we need to adapt.
“We have to understand also that we’re not going to win all the battles anymore,” he continues. “And maybe having to fight for dollars and other resources, maybe that’s not a bad thing because now we need to be better at quantifying our value.”
Reckitt was also organized differently than what Widup was used to. Siloed across business units and with decision-makers spread out regionally as well as globally, security pitches had to be tailored to every level in order to have the desired impact.
Widup would start by meeting with global strategic leaders, and he leveraged his mentors in the organization to tailor presentations to each stakeholder’s preferences. That meant whittling down presentations to a slick eight slides that could be explained in 15 minutes or less, leaving plenty of time for questions and discussion. Those presentations would be used as the foundation for subsequent conversations with regional leaders and to kick off fact-finding missions about the regional leaders’ priorities, preferences, and risk management challenges. The Widup and his team could determine how security could provide value based on those insights.
“We got direction from them, these regional and global leaders, and from there we started to build this network of colleagues who would help us to develop a security strategy both globally and regionally that strategically fit what the organization’s leaders wanted to have done,” Widup says. This model required significant flexibility, since Widup might walk into a meeting in March with one idea of what security would look like but end up completely revamping that concept by May to better fit the available resources and risk appetite of the business units or stakeholders.
“We learned that change in this organization was indeed dynamic,” he says. “It was all the time, because that’s the nature of the industry. It’s not the case in the pharmaceutical industry or many other highly regulated industries where change is purposefully very slow. [At Reckitt,] without that relationship with leaders that then trickled down to site leaders, it would have been difficult.”
If we want to be seen as an enterprise-driven organizational element that adds value to the company at all levels, all times, then we need to adapt.
Local leaders were often the most difficult allies to earn. Security needed funding from these leaders to make meaningful regional change, but that spending would affect local budgets and potentially put the leaders’ bonuses at risk. Widup and his team had to clearly spell out the benefits of investing in regional security efforts, sometimes even working at a personal level to tie security elements into the regions’ annual goals and objectives, which would be assessed to determine their bonuses.
For those conversations to land, “you have to tie it into what the threat and vulnerabilities are at the site level, at the regional level,” Widup explains.
For Latin American operations, organizational risk lay primarily along the supply chain, he says. The security team tracked and showed a steady reduction in thefts and related knock-on effects, including back-orders, penalties for delivering products late, or fines from suppliers. Widup could also demonstrate that security led to a reduction in costs affiliated with other disruptions in the supply chain like labor strikes or socioeconomic-related unrest.
“We were able to leverage intelligence and divert these supply chains around the civil disruptions and still get to our customers on time—or within a reasonable period of time thereafter—so that fines and penalties were not placed against us,” Widup says. “We’re able to show the dollar value, the savings, and how that’s going to affect our sales down the road. That’s how we were able to justify the expense of having a fairly expansive supply chain security program there.”
“It’s that continual value proposition: ‘What have you done for us lately?’” he adds. “We adopted that as the overarching theme to ensure that we were making a difference and were able to justify our expenses.”
Those successes do not guarantee future buy-in, however. Turnover in the consumer goods industry is huge, including around 10 percent of senior management annually, Widup says. This means he was constantly reeducating individuals, teams, and business lines about what security could bring to the table. Despite the regular resets, this period of Widup’s career was both challenging and energizing.
“It was a great experience on how to anticipate challenges and meet them head-on,” he says, even though the continuous fight for resources and acceptance could wear the security team down at times.
“You can’t rest on your laurels,” Widup says. “You relish and enjoy those wins, but don’t sit on those. …Keep moving forward. Do not allow the negative outcomes to diminish your passion for the mission. Because there are probably more of those than there are successes. But you can’t allow that to beat you down. You have to continue to learn from that, grow from that, and keep moving forward.”
Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected].
