ON POINT
Feels like running a marathon … uphill! models and prioritise our human capital and that flawless communication is the key to success.
From risk management to Situation Room The decision-making process has shifted. Before, we used a set of methods to do risk assessment, forecasting weeks, months and even years ahead. Now, we rely a lot more on live data in shorter periods.
Ori Lahav
CEO, Kenes Group
As a sports lover, my favourite way to disconnect and have a moment for myself is to watch or do some myself, when circumstances allow. Running is an activity that I particularly enjoy, even in a work context. I remember a couple of years ago at IMEX in Las Vegas when the morning run – which I usually join – took us up and down every pedestrian bridge around the Mandalay Bay. It was an exhausting one, I can tell you, and at the same time it was perfectly fitting for the current state of the meetings industry and what it feels like to lead in it. I’m glad it was just a short run, for the fun of it, and not the marathon of CEOs’ dayto-day lives! In my case, this uphill marathon of managing a global team of over 350 employees, a business with over 100 long-term partners and more than 85 meetings per year, has taught me how to shift from risk management to Situation Room decision-making, to think about new business 32
December 2023
Six years ago, at Kenes Group, we faced a situation where climatic forecasts showed that a typhoon was likely to hit Japan at the time of the Annual Global Meeting of the International Gynaecological Cancer Society (IGCS) in Kyoto. It was a high risk, with a high impact, therefore we had a Plan B in place. But in today’s world, things are changing so rapidly that some metrics are useless. We don’t even know what to anticipate. There are extreme climatic conditions, such as the recent volcanic activity in Iceland that cracked open streets in several towns; global inflation has hit a record of 8.73 per cent, even higher than during the 2008 financial crisis (6.34 per cent) and there is an imminent risk of prolonged inflation; we are witnessing emerging wars and geopolitical and economic stability is at stake. So, we moved to a Situation Room approach, in the sense that we make decisions faster, on the spot, according to the data available at that moment, and of course, technology supports that because communication is easier: we have the internet, artificial intelligence and tools to help make decisions much faster. When COVID hit, for example, at Kenes we had a Situation Room twice