Moneyball For The World Of Security

In 2002, Billy Beane changed the game of baseball for the better and forever.  Moneyball is one of my all-time favorite sports books, and I rarely flip past the channel when I come across the movie on TV.  Billy Beane made a name for himself by going against the grain and upsetting the system for evaluating pro-baseball player prospects.  Instead of relying on the subjective observations of baseball insiders, he went beyond the commonly used statistics of stolen bases and batting average, and instead chose to analyze on-base percentage and slugging percentage as true indicators of player’s capability.  This went against the conventional analysis and put Beane on the receiving end of a great deal of criticism.  This criticism ended after the A’s set an American League record of 20 consecutive wins and secured the AL West division title, putting his objective approach on the map.  When the Boston Red Sox replicated his process, they built a World Series Championship team in two years and won the title again three years later.  Billy Beane stayed true to his belief even as baseball traditionalists told him over and over “this is not how baseball is played.”  Scouts said their tacit understanding of the players “intangibles” and “tools” was the most effective way to build a team, not by the numbers.  Billy Beane proved them wrong.

In sports, it is easy to show that the Oakland A’s approach to building a team worked.  There is a clear win-loss record.  There are clear increases or decreases in revenue from merchandise and ticket sales.  In security – whether for the military, law enforcement, or corporate security – determining success is much more difficult.  Deterrence is a difficult statistic to measure and should, a criminal succeed in his mission it may not even register as a loss. Without a clear win-loss feedback loop in the security field, it can be difficult to convince people that their approach can be improved.

The security world is full of people who have succeeded based on their intuitive judgments and gut feelings about people.  The limitation to this is that intuition takes years to develop, and it is difficult to calibrate this intuition to ensure it is honed and accurate.  There are an overwhelming number people that I’ve met in the security industry that resist the inclusion of science into the observations.  I believe that part of the reason for this is that, to identify the subcomponents of an intuitive observation, someone else could learn how to do it in less time and even better than their more experienced peers.  By challenging the status quo, science-backed observations upset the balance and change the way it has always been done.

This site is designed for people who demand a better way.  It is designed for people who don’t care how it has always been done and don’t care for the mid-level managers and officers who are resistant to deviating from the status quo.  This site is for those who demand that a development program is backed by science to be true and valid indicators of a person’s intentions and capabilities.  Behavioral analysis is for people who want a system that allows for them to take control of developing their intuition, and do so in a way that calibrates their observations to ensure they are accurate.  This training doesn’t replace experience, it just shortens the time needed to be effective when you are not yet a seasoned veteran and enhances the experience you already have.  This site is for people who don’t want to simply wait or put in their time before they can succeed.

If I just described you, welcome to The CP Journal, the site designed to give you the ability to take control of your own security.  Get left of bang and stay there.