Daniel Colin: A Time of Transition

Daniel Colin, Director of Corporate Security, MillerCoors

When Daniel Colin started as Director of Corporate Security at MillerCoors in February, he took over where his predecessor left off. “What lacked was a cohesiveness, not only in the security organization, but in the way that they were perceived throughout the entire company,” he says. “I reorganized the entire department, changed the philosophy. I’ve been pushing and changing the culture, and unifying it. In fact, they say that they’re talking to each other more than they’ve ever talked to anyone before within their own group.”

With a mission to “protect our people, assets, and good name by leading through ethical business practices and delivering best-in-class security services to support MillerCoors in becoming the best beer company in America,” Colin is impressed with the ethical integrity of the company. “MillerCoors absolutely demands compliance and responsibility in drinking. They really, really believe it, it’s not just words,” he says. “Putting those words in our mission statement fits very well.”

Change has been in the air since Colin arrived. “The move is to partner with the breweries, and actually own the guards and train them to do the same job across the board,” Colin says. “We’ve implemented new processes and procedures and partnered with human resources and legal to create a new Threat Response Team to handle workplace violence issues. There’s more structure and changing the culture so that everyone understands the need to protect company assets is showing significant gain.”

Standardizing access control across the board is another big adjustment. “Right now, we’re in the mindset of change. They know they need to do some upgrading and changing,” says Colin. “There’s new senior leadership here as well. They really are striving to do it right the first time, unlike a lot of companies. I have not gotten any pushback on the changes, which has been phenomenal.”

Colin enjoys working in his sector, “What’s not to like about working in the beer industry?” he asks, though he admits that someone once told him he’s in the entertainment industry rather than the beer industry. “Our name is everywhere,” he says. “This company has been around for a long time. Before I worked here, most of the time I drank Miller products anyway, and now that I’ve got an opportunity to see what else we have, this is a blast. They really are a great company, and they’ve been fun to work for.”

Having older facilities that have been doing things the same way for long periods of time and that are concerned about the costs of upgrading is one of the security challenges for Colin. “I think everyone is buying into it, but it’s still a matter of worrying about the cost and who’s going to pay for it,” he says. “Because of coming in after budgets have been approved, and changing the mindset that Corporate Security will own access and CCTV systems, determining if it will be a brewery upgrade or if Corporate Security will do the improvement is definitely a change in culture.”

Supply chain issues are also a typical concern, especially theft, as is workplace violence. “We’ve been doing a lot of training on that, updating procedures and policies and working with a lot of the local law enforcement departments to do on-site tours and training and incident response,” says Colin.

Coming from the pharmaceutical industry, Colin was used to counterfeiting being a big problem. “There aren’t issues like that here,” he says. “If somebody counterfeits our logo and prints out a bunch of shirts and sells them, it’s still advertising. That was a different mindset for me, obviously.”

One of the most difficult aspects of the job is implementing change. Colin has been getting feedback that people want Corporate Security more involved. “That’s the kind of change that is good for any corporation or organization. In today’s world, security organizations are more of a strategic partnership to help the business and show ROI versus the thinking that security is nothing more than gates, guns and guards. That’s where we are heading, and everyone we are working with agrees. Hearing that kind of thing just lends more credence to us needing to be out there more,” says Colin. “We need to not only be more visible, but do what we say we are going to do and not just say the words. Ownership of security falls under Corporate Security, and that is where we are heading.”

In his spare time, Colin enjoys playing golf, smoking cigars, and drinking beer and wine.