Leanne Metz, PMP, MBCI,  is an experienced business continuity and project management professional. She has developed and implemented global programs in the areas of business continuity, continuous improvement, and change management. Most recently she has been leading Mead Johnson Nutrition’s global business continuity program, conducting training and exercises throughout Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America.  We recently asked Leanne a couple of questions regarding her role in Crisis Management:

  1. As it relates to your current or a previous crisis management role, what’s one of the biggest challenges and why?

“When I began to develop the current program, it was a challenge to get stakeholders aligned on the program scope. Because this was a new program in a mature company, there were many perspectives on what crisis management was (and wasn’t). A few senior executives had a similar background from our prior company’s procedures, but we had a significant number of functional leaders who were new to the organization and brought with them a variety of knowledge and ideas. I also found that even though I thought we had reached alignment, we revisited the strategy due to changing perspectives. Maintaining executive alignment and program support is on ongoing challenge and should not be overlooked throughout implementation.”

  1. What is the most rewarding part of your job and why?

“We don’t have a single crisis team that’s responsible for managing an event. We have multiple geographic based teams. These various teams are responsible for managing an event that occurs at their site, or in their region and are responsible for reporting “up” to management. The most rewarding part of my job is the positive feedback from the teams after we complete crisis training and exercise sessions. The teams know that they are responsible, and that they aren’t prepared. After we train and exercise them on the tools, processes and resources that are available to them they feel a great sense of relief as they are now ready to face whatever event occurs. It’s extremely rewarding to see the confidence the team develops as they gain new skills and knowledge, and are ready to take on whatever challenges they encounter.”

Leanne will be discussing “Implementing a Global Business Continuity Program” at this year’s conference.