estorm international reposted this
For a change, I (William Gaultier) want to write this post here (not my personal feed). "We weren’t ready for this kind of year" A few days ago, I had a conversation with a senior exec at a major APAC company. Someone I’ve worked with before. Smart. Steady. Not the kind who rattles easily. Halfway through the call, he went quiet for a second and said: “We weren’t ready for this kind of year.” “The plan we had — it didn’t mean much once reality showed up.” He wasn’t talking about a data breach or a PR slip-up. He meant everything that’s come at once: — Tariffs swinging overnight and blowing up forecasts, supply chain — U.S. election noise bleeding into boardrooms here — AI-generated voice clips spreading before legal could even blink — APAC elections in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia colliding with internal politics and market pressure We talked about what gave way first. It wasn’t the plan. It was the coordination. The comms. The ops assumptions. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Are we all just quietly realizing our ops risk mitigation, cyber plans & crisis plans aren’t built for this kind of pressure? So I’ll ask you what I’ve been asking myself: 👉 What’s already caught you off guard this year — even though you thought you were ready? 👉 Where did things wobble most — the team, the timing, the assumptions? 👉 And honestly… have you had a moment yet where you thought, “Holy cow (I am being polite), we definitely didn't plan for THAT!”? I don’t think that exec was alone. And maybe we don’t need to pretend we are either. Thoughts? #ExecutiveLeadership #CrisisPlanning #2025PressureTest #Geopolitics #APACLeadership #CrisisFatigue #LeadingThroughUncertainty #apac #global Adam DeVito Steve Astle Ajay Mohan Kelly Weber Maureen Tseng Michael Fenech Karen OBrien Jakob Angele Jackie Mah Dau Ming Seling Robert Zaffiris Marc Rivoira Yoolim Lee Catharine Montgomery, MBA Jonathan Hew Peter Brownell Conrad Mendoza Jr. Tod Gimbel Adj. Professor Murugason R. Thangaratnam