Tracking Devices

Sometimes the greatest learning can come from a disaster! You’re forced by circumstances to sit up and take notice or action. In an ideal world, it would be better to learn from others’ mistakes, but life doesn’t always work that way! Industry veteran Rupert G tells us more…

When I began working for myself I put a memo on my phone to back up my hard drives at the end of every week.

I did it once (felt smug) and then the reminder just became another annoying “buzz” in my pocket which I came to ignore, until down the line and “Bang” an electric surge went through my hard drive. The cold sweat crept down my neck as I did the maths and I realised that this disaster wasn’t going to be measured in months but a few years. When I took it to the computer guy he sagely nodded and said “Well sir, you’re not alone, it happens to most people only once”. Very helpful, thanks.

Years later (and a bit wiser) I was chatting with a client on a pleasant sunny afternoon, cups of tea in hand. Not far off his staff were being shouted at at a vehicle check point at the culmination of a HEAT course. The Arab Spring was ongoing and stories were circulating that one or two crisis responders had been caught out when they couldn’t get their clients staff out of Libya.

The result had been red faces and some very annoyed clients whose staff had been left stranded.

My client asked me if we had an Ops Room full of serious looking ex-soldiers (like some scene from a Jason Bourne movie) who were just waiting to kick into action once one of his team got into a sticky situation. I replied “No, we concentrate on the situational awareness side of the training. But I can certainly recommend a couple of very good companies that I like and who have watched over me when I was overseas”.