PROJECT UPDATES

What we’ve been doing, where we’ve been travelling, and what’s next.

Crisis Simulation Exercises

It's been another busy month for crisis simulation exercises. This month, we designed and delivered a major crisis simulation exercise in Hong Kong. This exercise focused on the regional impacts of an escalation between China and Taiwan.

Over the years, we've found a few areas where teams tend to struggle during simulation exercises:

1. The team doesn't follow their own procedures.
2. The experts on the team don't step in where necessary to guide the team in their own procedures.
3. The team struggles to manage information, due to either a lack of processes or a lack of tools and displays.

These three factors can be easily fixed. I've written an article on empowering crisis team performance here.

We've opened bookings for crisis simulation exercises for the October - November period (after 21 October). If your organisation is interested in conducting a crisis simulation during this timeframe, please let us know.

Travel Risk Management

This month, I started a project to conduct a comprehensive review of the travel risk management framework for a major university. I've been doing more and more work in this area as organisations seek to streamline their approach to travel risk management and apply best practices. We align our approach with ISO 31030 (which provides a robust framework but isn't intended to address best practices across the domain of travel risk management).

TRAINING

Training workshops and customised training solutions.

"The Big One" - Japan Earthquake Planning and Response Workshop

Earlier this month, the Japan government issued its first public warning of a "major earthquake" striking in the near future. These warnings relate to recent seismic activity along the Nankai Trough, a subduction zone that stretches along Japan's Pacific coast.

In response to increased concerns relating to the risk of a major earthquake in Japan, we've developed a 2-hour workshop specifically designed for incident and crisis management teams.

This workshop takes team members through the first few days after a major earthquake occurs, explaining what to expect and how to respond to different challenges.

During the workshop, we'll challenge many of the assumptions organisations have regarding their capacity to respond and their understanding of duty of care. We also get into granular details regarding logistics, medical and communications support.

We wrap up the session by focusing on preparation. Given all the potential impacts, how can you ensure your organisation and your employees are appropriately (and realistically) prepared?

If you'd like to have a chat about how this workshop might improve your readiness for a major earthquake in Japan, please get in touch and we can set up a time to talk.

APPLICATIONS

Updates on our applications.

Whistler

Whistler is a simple and secure whistleblowing application that enables organisations to receive and manage confidential reports from whistleblowers. We launched Whistler 9 years ago. This year, we updated the application to version 2.0. We increased the level of encryption and added case management tools, amongst a host of other improvements.

Pricing for organisations starts at $19 a month.

If you're looking for a simple and secure whistleblowing solution for your organisation, you can learn more here.

Incident Manager

Incident Manager is the first application that's focused on team performance during an incident. Major incidents are already inherently challenging. There's no point in adding an additional layer of complexity by forcing teams to use software that increases cognitive load and only serves to make the situation more difficult to manage. Incident Manager doesn't get in the way of teams. Instead, it makes them more effective at managing complex incidents.

Please reach out if you'd like a demo.

Exercise Manager

Exercise Manager is our in-house tool for designing and delivering crisis exercises. It's a unique application that makes it easy to plan and deliver crisis exercises and monitor team performance across your organisation. After using this application for our own exercises, we're going to be making Exercise Manager available to our clients as well.

Please reach out if you'd like a demo.

Tenacio

Tenacio is a project management application designed for people like me who are juggling a diverse range of projects. Tenacio cuts through the myriad of projects and tasks and tells you what you need to work on next. It does this based on the deadlines you set and your preferences for when you like to work on different activities.

I've been using Tenacio to manage my own projects for the last 3 months and it's already bringing some much needed order to the chaos. This month, I've continued to make small improvements here and there to make it more useful. If you'd like to try Tenacio, get in touch.

STATION XV

Updates on our in-house gear, sharing a behind-the-scenes look at our design and manufacturing processes.

We're on track to have the Travel Duffel available in October. If you'd like to pre-order, please let me know and I'll put one aside for you.

Last month, we updated the Station XV website with new and significantly more professional photos. Check out the updates here.

Please help to spread the word about Station XV.

PUBLICATIONS

We’ve published a number of books on crisis management, travel security and security evacuations.

Crisis Management

I've published two books focused on crisis management:

• The Crisis Response Handbook
• The Crisis Simulation Handbook

These books encapsulate over two decades of experience training crisis teams, running crisis simulation exercises, and responding to crisis events.

If you are responsible for your organisation's crisis management programme, or if you're a member of a crisis management team, you'll find these books to be a useful resource.

You can learn more about these books and download free samples here.

Bulk Orders

Several highly regarded organisations (and one prestigious university) have purchased copies of our books for their teams. If your team would benefit from the knowledge and experience contained in our books, please reach out. We can provide discounts for bulk orders.

READING LIST

Links to interesting articles worth your time.

USPS Text Scammers Duped His Wife, So He Hacked Their Operation. The Smishing Triad network sends up to 100,000 scam texts per day globally. One of those messages went to Grant Smith, who infiltrated their systems and exposed them to US authorities. (Wired). Read here.

A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage. Private businessmen funded the shoestring operation, which was overseen by a top general; President Zelensky approved the plan, then tried unsuccessfully to call it off (Wall Street Journal). Read here.

The Pentagon Is Planning a Drone ‘Hellscape’ to Defend Taiwan. The US Defense Department’s grand strategy for protecting Taiwan from a massive Chinese military offensive involves flooding the zone with thousands of drones (Wired). Read here.

Exploring a PRC Short-of-War Coercion Campaign to Seize Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands and Possible Responses. (Institute for the Study of War). Read here.

AI Scientists Have a Problem: AI Bots Are Reviewing Their Work. ChatGPT is wreaking chaos in the field that birthed it (The Chronicle of Higher Education). Read here.

What to Make of China’s Moves in the Middle East. (ChinaFile). Read here.

How China Could Blockade Taiwan. Part 2 of a ChinaPower Series (CSIS). Read here.

China’s Real Economic Crisis. Why Beijing Won’t Give Up on a Failing Model (Foreign Affairs). Read here.

Tracking China’s Control of Overseas Ports. (Council on Foreign Relations). Read here.

That’s it for this month, folks.

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there.

Grant Rayner

Spartan9