There will always be a new crisis to deal with, and organisations with teams across the globe have to be prepared to facilitate effective localised responses when they hit. Today’s guest is Ian Wall, the Group Director of Security and Resilience at Worley. In this episode, Ian shares his unique perspectives from 15 years of experience building Worley’s global crisis planning and response capability and how this has recently been deployed in more than 50 countries during the COVID pandemic. Ian shares some of the major crises he has dealt with in his time at Worley, and some of the major differences and commonalities terms of the crises themselves as well as the response protocol between those and the current situation. He talks about the value of investing upfront in preparation, and what this means at Worley with its vast network of teams and clients all over the world. For Ian, responding to crises effectively is a matter of localised action and he talks about training branches of the organisation in different parts of the world to think critically under pressure and instilling a sense of preparedness in them. Ian believes that no response is the result of one leader with all the ideas, and he shares about doing what it takes to make it to the finish line as a team. We hear from Ian about his personal response to his line of work too – his thoughts about building perspective amid crisis, taking care of himself as well as many others, and how to see this moment not just as a disaster but a seed from which many great things can flourish too.

Key Points From This Episode:

A profile on Worley and Ian’s role in crisis prevention, preparation, and incident management.
Insights into Ian’s personal life, his family, stunted travel plans, and love of gardening.
Prior crises Ian has helped mitigate leading up to the present one in the form of COVID.
Common practices for preparing for all kinds of crises whose main challenge is the unknown.
The value of responses being team initiatives with a clear distribution of responsibility.
How Ian and his team work with clients around the world to foster crisis preparedness.
The unprecedented scale of the Worley response to COVID; the value of localised initiatives.
Getting teams and clients across the world to buy into preparedness in benign periods.
The toll this crisis has taken on Ian, lessons he has learned, and how he gets perspective.
How Ian approaches caring for so many people being just a single person.
Personal habits that help a handle a demanding position like Ian’s at this unique moment.
Ian’s advice for business leaders at this time; seeing this moment as an opportunity.

State of Matter: https://www.linkedin.com/company/state-of-matter/
Adam Detwiler: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adam-detwiler/
Ian Wall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-wall-a8b10114/