The skills that made me highly successful as a Worldwide Crisis Manager started in early childhood when I lived with my divorced father and a group of men in a house. I was taught to fend for myself in many things that would normally be handled by a mother. All the males were involved in trades of all kinds, including construction, auto, and all kinds of machine repair so I was taught how to repair anything and everything when it broke just like everyone else. I don’t ever remember any outside help ever being called for anything. With the knowledge inside the house, we could solve any repair or building problem. We had a variety of animals on our property, including chickens, turkeys, ducks, and rabbits.
On weekends, we would hunt and fish, so knowing how to prepare food from live animals was essential. I fired my first shotgun at age ten and that did not go so well. There was a lot of laughter, but it was not so funny to me when it lifted me completely off the ground as it knocked me over backward! I proved my value when we went hunting, we were never able to properly train a dog, so my job was to retrieve anything that was shot and went down on the land or in the water.
That early training worked well for me later in my Air Force Arctic and Desert survival training and later in some extreme skiing situations. When many people turned down the opportunities to repair aircraft in flight was confident that I knew enough to handle any situation, save some lives, and help accomplish many missions. My longevity of being a part of the IBM Mainframe Era and now being able to use that “assisted knowledge” as a part of the AI Revolution is something valuable, I am very proud of and plan to enjoy to the fullest.
I was allowed to create the Crisis Management role after winning the top technical award in a company. My role in crisis management involved coordinating specialized teams to rapidly respond to and resolve major IT, security, and communication issues on a global scale. The skills I developed include rapid response, expertise allocation, cross-functional collaboration, global reach, knowledge management, resource allocation, and incident command/oversight. The ability to manage critical situations is crucial for preventing disruptions or risks. My experience in crisis response, assembling experts, and utilizing my skills prepared me for managing high-stakes challenges, which will be assets in navigating the coming “AI Revolution”.
Maintaining composure and leveraging specialized teams in a coordinated way is crucial during crises and imperative for success.
The skills I developed before, during, and after my Crisis Management role, are highly valuable for the coming revolution, and I have experience in effectively utilizing many of them. I am incredibly excited about combining my natural skills with augmented Intelligence, also known as intelligence amplification. This AI is designed to enhance and complement human intelligence rather than replace it. Augmented intelligence systems work alongside humans to improve decision-making, problem-solving, and task completion.
My long history of Crisis Management skills has allowed me to come into any situation with the confidence that I will be able to find a way to resolve it successfully. Once I analyze the information and form an initial team, I incorporate additional skills as necessary to solve the problem. Many times the key to what I accomplish is to recognize something that is being overlooked.
An ongoing issue usually causes some level of frustration. Arriving at one project, I gathered all parties involved in a single room and announced that… “the Crisis team has arrived, we have never failed, and the problem will be solved!” “We have successfully done this before and the speed at which the resolution will happen depends on how much cooperation we receive.” I also added, “That will be the only thing that will slow us down!” I must have pressed the right button because there was a period of silence, and the highest-level and loudest manager went silent and grinned! The mood of the whole room became supportive. I know that many times, confidence can be everything! Most of the people that we helped were very happy to see our team arrive but, in many cases, the local management team did not want us to be successful because the perception was that it would make them look incapable. In many cases that was true and after some problems were resolved people were released or reassigned.
I am working and studying long hours every day to make certain that I can prove that I am a model of what can be achieved with Augmented Intelligence and a very high and lengthy level of natural, practical skills. I am very excited about another beginning!
