The Changing Landscape and Benefits of ADR with Nigel Wright of Miles Mediation and Arbitration

In this episode of On Record PR, our host, Gina Rubel, goes on record with Nigel Wright, mediator and arbitrator in the Atlanta office of Miles Mediation and Arbitration. Nigel is a barred attorney in New York and Georgia, and a solicitor of the senior courts of England and Wales. Nigel has served as a senior partner at two Am Law 100 Law firms, on both sides of the Atlantic, one of which was DLA Piper. He was in house for five years in the U.S. at two specialty international insurers. He also held various senior management positions including in the GC’s office where he was the corporate representative handling extra contractual and bad faith claims against the company. Nigel handled their highest value claims for all classes of business.

In Nigel’s various roles, he has mediated every conceivable type of insurance and reinsurance claim on behalf of insurers and reinsurers. He has almost 30 years of alternative dispute resolution experience. As a mediator and arbitrator at Miles, Nigel handles extensive personal injury claims in disputes in over 50 countries and complex claims (including class actions) including mass torts, casualty, crisis management, cybersecurity, D&O, E&O, insurance coverage, product defect, and many other areas.

During their post-recording conversation, Nigel added that “One of the great things about online or virtual mediations,” which he defined during the podcast, “is that you don’t have to be from the state where the mediators and arbitrators are located.” In fact, Nigel handles cases in most states in the United States as well as internationally.

This episode was recorded in May 2020 during the third month of the COVID-19 Pandemic during which the business of law and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) changed. Gina and Nigel discuss the impact on coronavirus and social distancing as well as the ADR industry in general.

Welcome, Nigel. Is there anything I missed about your that you would like to share with listeners?

I thought you did a great job covering it, but just a couple of points that might be of interest. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an age when there weren’t many overseas offices for law firms. And so that’s why I was able to travel around the world on behalf of my clients resolving cases. And I started out actually doing international aviation liability work, which is the mass tort casualty claims. And so that really gave me an introduction to alternative dispute resolution and using that to resolve these cases that otherwise could have dragged on for years. I just wanted to share that bit of background. Then, over the years, I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve been involved in some of the highest profile matters in the U.S., which has given me exposure to other classes of business and other interesting areas of the law.

I understand you have worked in the aviation industry as well. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Certainly, but the role that I had when I was doing the international aviation work was primarily almost like a consultant. Even though you’re providing legal advice, you’re part of the ‘go team’ as they say. So, in the event that something terrible had happened you’ll get a phone call, sometimes it was in the middle of night, and you will be asked to go to wherever the particular country was and meet with the airline. In conjunction with the airline, what you would then do is ensure that they complied with their own internal and also external crisis management and communication plans. I was very heavily involved in drafting press releases, making sure that there was a consistent statements in terms of what was going on, what the airline was doing, how it was coordinating with regulatory authorities and, unfortunately, with hospitals and other service providers that were affected by the tragic accidents.

That process would probably last the first week or two weeks. Then, that would then transition to more of a traditional liability role where we would look at the exposure, the financial exposure, we would start analyzing the cost because, ultimately, I have been retained or has been paid for by the insurance. They always wanted to know how much it’s going to cost. Once that process is finished, we then moved on to the next phase, which was resolution. When I first started out 30 years ago, ADR was brand new in the UK and was almost unheard of anywhere else in the world. But over time it became more and more prevalent. I think for me, I was working down in Latin America. A lawyer I was working with who was very, very talented, is an arbitrator and mediator. I recommended that we use their legal arbitration center to mediation resolve the cases as opposed to sitting down just with the lawyers or maybe with lawyers and their families. I really took to it and loved it because it was super-efficient. It was transparent. The families knew what was going on. We were able to resolve the tremendous number of cases in a timeline that, up until that point was, was completely unheard of. I was, I was a convert from, from then.

Gina Rubel

I want to share that I, too, when I was an arbitrator some years ago, loved the process. You were getting people to come to a decision and come to a resolution, it was much less expensive, much more efficient, and much more transparent. It’s something that, as both a lawyer and a communicator, I have always really held in high regard. I appreciate that you said that as well.

I’m curious as a crisis communicator and one that has also dealt with very high-profile international litigation, what has your experience been in how the court of public opinion has an effect, if any, on the outcome in arbitration and mediation?

You absolutely identified the key issue with crisis communication. Every dollar you spend on crisis communication, provided is good crisis communication, is worth a multitude in terms of savings. While the goal isn’t to save money on a liability front, it is to save the company. So, crisis communication is as much about ensuring that the company continues to exist and to making sure that the response is appropriate with whatever the particular incident happens to be. There are so many examples of really good crisis communication and management, but there are equal number really bad crisis communications. Even today, it shocks me that it still goes on and every time you see something bad happen and there’s a bad crisis communication or messaging, you know, again, well they’re going to pay for that later.

Gina Rubel

It’s fascinating to me because that as a both a lawyer and a crisis communicator, which you are as well in many respects and as well as one who is helping to bring matters to resolution. What happens in the way matters are handled from day one through resolution really does affect the big picture. I appreciate your answer to that. And while we didn’t talk about it before, I had a feeling that’s what you were going to say.

Can you please define ADR and the various forms of ADR that you handle at Miles?

In terms of dispute resolution, it has really been described as anything that doesn’t involve traditional litigation. There are tons of textbooks and articles written on exactly what constitutes ADR. For most people it means mediation or arbitration. Then, there are some hybrid examples such as ‘med-arb’, mediation followed by arbitration. Essentially, it is using a vehicle outside of the court system to resolve your dispute.

We can start with arbitration, because in some ways that’s the closest thing to litigation. When I first started out, arbitration was touted as being a cheap alternative. Now, 30 years later, I don’t think anybody really believes it’s a cheaper alternative, certainly with the larger losses. I think in terms of the smaller losses, by which I mean things under a million dollars, it’s a lot easier to be cost effective in arbitration because you can choose the set of rules or edit the rules to limit discovery, to limit deposition testimony, to limit the extent of the litigation, and the ambit of what’s in dispute. However, there are some things to bear in mind. People choose arbitration not just for cost but for privacy. I think particularly for companies, the importance of having their disputes resolved privately is critical. They may have ongoing trading relationships and they might fight really, really hard in an arbitration and then do a deal with each other either during or after the arbitration. It’s a strange vehicle from that respect.

Then, mediation is simply resolving a matter using the third party. There’s so much empirical evidence to support the contention that if you have a bilateral negotiation, the chances are you have a winner and a loser. If you have a third-party disinterested person, such as a neutral or a mediator who tries to bring those parties together, the general consensus is that the value that both parties get out of that process is greater than if they just have the bilateral discussion or negotiation. So, mediation really sprung up as a much cheaper form of resolving a dispute. It gives you certainty. It also has the benefit of confidentiality in most cases, but sometimes that’s waved for all sorts of reasons. In addition to which, it gives you finality. One of the things I do think people forget about mediation, is if you go into a mediation and you resolve your case, your legal rights are affected permanently because you have reached an agreement. It is important to think of mediation seriously, not just as “let’s give it a go and see if we can get the case resolved.”

Mediation to a large extent is what you make of it because you decide the process, you decide what goes into it. So, if you want it just to resolve a particularly acrimonious dispute, it can be very good. It can be exceptionally helpful. But on the other hand, you can treat it almost like an arbitration. The only difference being it is nonbinding or mediations are voluntary. So, you can prepare to the same extent as you would.

I think a lot of your decision-making process is going to depend upon the nature of your claim, probably the value involved because mediation is seen as a much more cost-effective way to resolve your case. There’s a tremendous amount of mediation in divorce. I think that’s probably where some people who’ve either heard about it, who aren’t in the legal field, they know that there’s mediation in divorce and that’s a dispute that really needs somebody to bring everybody together.

In terms of legal mediations, I think it depends a lot on the cost of the business and what you’re trying to achieve. For a personal injury claim, for example, the person who’s been injured or is bringing the claim, this is their day in court. They really care whether they have a good relationship with the other side or not. That’s not the purpose of them being there. The purpose is to secure the maximum recovery that they believe they are able to without going to trial. If they can achieve that, then the case will probably settle. If they don’t believe they will achieve that, then, in the olden days, pre-COVID-19, they would end up going to trial.

Then there are other cases. You might mediate a commercial sales agreement or software agreement where there’s a 10-year relationship and you’re trying to resolve a problem that neither party can understand why can’t be resolved on their terms. The greater advantage that mediation has other so forms of dispute resolution is that the person that’s communicating with you about that is the mediator. If you have done your work properly, the mediator understands your position and they also understand the other person’s position. That gives them a tremendous advantage because they ought to be in a switch position where they can start giving suggestions or floating some ideas that you may not have thought of. Not because you’re not smart or rational; quite the contrary. It’s simply that you are missing critical information that only the mediator holds. I think there are different styles and different types of mediation and I think the important thing is to understand what you need for your case.

Gina Rubel:

One of the terms that is used in the industry, which you just described is the word neutral. You are a neutral, you are a neutral party that is able to see both sides and able to provide value to both sides. I think that’s important to mention. If anyone were to go to the Miles Mediation website, they understand if they haven’t worked with a neutral before, what that means.

Nigel Wright:

I completely agree. In fact, my own personal view is that is the most important thing, because if you are not neutral, then you’re not doing what you’re being employed or retained by the parties to do. You can’t have an opinion as to a particular offer. Your duty is to communicate that offer. Now, you may well turn around to one of the parties and say you think it’s a bad idea for these reasons, but your duty is to represent that offer to the other side so that they can consider it. That doesn’t mean you can’t add comments to it, but it does mean that you have to respect that and you have to respect both parties equally or sometimes more than one or two parties. It’s really, really important that you have a mediator who is neutral.

We’re in May 2020 and there’s also been a move to something called “ODR” or online dispute resolution. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Some people use that. Other people will say virtual. I think it started out as remote, and then a number of mediators thought remote doesn’t sound particularly consistent with trying to communicate with people.

Virtual mediations or online mediations or dispute resolution is really just using a virtual platform or an online platform. We use Zoom for many reasons. There’s also Teams, Cisco, WebEx, there are a number of different platforms that can be used and there are some significant advantages, but there are also some disadvantages. I have to say, having done some, the first one I was actually really nervous. I was thinking, my goodness, people just aren’t going to connect and not going to resolve their case. In fact, the exact opposite happened. What we found in particular at Miles is that we’re actually getting a higher percentage of cases resolved in virtual mediations. That may well be a reflection of the economic realities of today and the need for resolution today rather than the platform itself.

Now, there are limitations. It’s harder to read someone’s expression. It’s more difficult to create pressure in a virtual or online mediation. One thing I would say on that is it’s because you’re sitting at home, or maybe you’re in your office and maybe there’s nobody else around. You don’t have to catch a train. You don’t have to beat the rush hour traffic. You can take longer if you want to take longer. Equally, you can just say, “I’m leaving” and you’re off. There’s no great dramatic exit, which sometimes happens in mediations. There’s a real finality to that, but you can just turn it off. You don’t have to listen to anybody. There are differences to be aware of. It is a great platform. It works really, really well. I think there’s some certain things you need to think about when you do an online mediation. Personally, I really have enjoyed it.

Gina Rubel

I’m going to ask you about those. I find it fascinating that the United States Supreme Court is now hearing matters virtually. Today, the Supreme Court is hearing a matter that came out of my home state, Pennsylvania. While I was unable to listen to it, I did read some of the back and forth and I found it fascinating. As one who is licensed to try a matter in the United States Supreme Court, I cannot imagine, yet, arguing before that tribunal virtually as you will. It is a changing world — everything’s changing.

Nigel Wright

Yes, it is but it does work.

Gina Rubel

It does work. Hearing the Justice’s feedback today on some of the questions. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital today and she still heard the matter and still was able to ask very pointed questions. What a gift that is to the tribunal and to the balance of how decisions are going to be made. I find it fascinating.

Dispute resolution is not new, as you mentioned, it’s been around for several decades. Have the distancing measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 increased the volume of virtual or online mediations and arbitrations? What are you seeing as a trend?

I personally think it’s a bit of a cycle. The first couple of weeks following the shutdown, most people said, “let me just push off my mediation. I’m going to push it off for a month.” Everything would be fine in a month’s time. That happened quite a bit. A number of mediations were canceled.

Some, however, did go ahead. I was very fortunate to have one that went ahead during that initial timeframe. I think those are the ones where the lawyers are pretty comfortable with remote or virtual depositions. For them, there’s no real difference. The cases I was involved in didn’t involve personal injury. One was a coverage mater, the other a contractual dispute.

The issue is really if you need to get your case resolved, what are you going to do? Do you want to wait six months, hope the courts will open and hope that your case is the case that’s going to be heard? Or would you want to get ahead and go ahead and resolve them? After some initial reluctance, I think lawyers have started to think about scheduling virtual mediations and are now doing that. I would say that the frequency is down a bit. I don’t think that the demand is down. By which I mean, I think the larger cases in particular that are not critical in terms of revenue, there’s no massive economic need to resolve it today as opposed to six- or 12-months’ time, I think those cases, to a large extent, get kicked down. The cases that are fairly well advanced and people are looking for a resolution that they are going ahead.

I think the first couple of weeks things slowed down a little. The next two or three weeks, things started getting scheduled and mediations were taking place. We’re now seeing a number of cases that people would have mediated a month ago now being booked and there are a lot of mediations going on.

Gina Rubel

I’m happy to hear that. I suspect that it’s only the volume is going to increase quite rapidly over time. That’s my prediction. I have nothing to base that in other than my own belief in the need to get to resolution in many matters, the backlogs of courts that are going to become ever daunting, and the issues with travel and social distancing. I suspect that the industry is going to have a major uptick.

Nigel Wright

I completely agree. I would add that if you think about every economic downturn, there’s normally a little hiatus before new litigation kicks off. Even after litigation kicks off, there’s normally a bit of time before it’s ripe for resolution, but it all has to be resolved. Typically, mediations are more effective at achieving that because of the tripartite relationship. It’s just easier to reach resolution that way than on a phone call or a Zoom call to your face and party, particularly if they’ve been adverse to each other for some time. So, I completely agree. I think we’ll see an uptick probably towards the end of the year, maybe early next year. The volumes will increase really quite significantly. I will say things that people do have been reluctant to mediate virtually or online are going to start doing it because other people are. If you can’t get your cases resolved effectively online, then there’s going to be another attorney that’s going to be able to do that. If you’re an attorney, you need to demonstrate that you have that skillset.

Gina Rubel

Think about the hourly costs too. For example, insurance carriers who are, you know, paying attorney’s hourly if they’re not on some other alternative billing and they’re going to see this ability for an attorney not to have to travel somewhere for them to be able to do everything from their desk. There’s going to be cost efficiencies. My prediction, not in any data whatsoever, is that the industry is going to, can continue to grow.

I do want to share with our listeners that there is an article or a blog on the Miles Mediation website titled, “Alternative Court Services: Timely Resolution in a Time of Need.” I recommend reading that to understand how you can move into alternative dispute resolution more timely. It was one of the articles that I read in preparing for this interview.

You recently served as a panelist on a webinar titled, “Navigating the World of Virtual Mediation and Arbitration: 25 Actionable Tips.”  What were some of the top tips that you’d like to share with our audience about virtual mediation and arbitration?

We actually did that webinar fairly early on in the pandemic, so many of the questions and answers related to how you set up your screen, what the lighting should be, which are important and still relevant today. There are a number of questions and answers that I think I would like to share. Of those, my number one is preparation or practice. If you’re going to do a Zoom, WebEx or Teams mediation, and I suspect it’ll be Zoom because it has the best platform for mediation, the breakout rooms that are already established are incredibly intuitive and security can be addressed. Assuming that you’re doing that, the last thing you want to do is kick off your online mediation not knowing how to navigate your way around the platform, how to communicate with your clients, how to talk to the mediator who is or isn’t seeing you and how they’re seeing you. What we strongly recommend, if you schedule a mediation and if your mediator doesn’t reach out to you beforehand, and I mean a few days beforehand if not even longer, reach out to them. Ask them to teach you how the platform works. Check your lighting to see what you look like. Once you’ve done all that, and I’m assuming in this case that you are the attorney, do the same with your client. If you think about it, you’re only one half of the equation sitting on your side. Your clients probably not sitting next to you. They’re probably in another office somewhere. From that perspective, they may not be aware that the when the mediator talks to both of you in your breakout room, your client hears everything. Your client may say something that may be against their best interest and you as an attorney in the olden days, you put up a hand, you put a nod down, you can’t do that in the virtual mediation. Unless you and your clients are in sync, there may be some awkward moments. I would strongly recommend that you spend as much time as you can, getting comfortable with the platform and also comfortable with the mediator. Find out how good they are.

Gina Rubel:

Is everyone required to have their video camera on?

Nigel Wright

Interestingly, no they’re not. It really depends. You can do a mediation on the phone. You didn’t have to have zoom. I’ve had them with parties who have been on the phone and some of the video. That’s certainly possible.

Gina Rubel

Even though we’re recording a podcast, you and I are looking at each other on zoom. We’re having, we can make somewhat of eye contact and that we’re looking at our screen, but, you know, I’m looking at you and vice versa. I find being able to read facial expressions and body language is such an important part of interaction.

Do you find video more effective or does it depend on the matter and the individuals that you’re working with?

I perhaps should share with you that when I was a party to a mediation, I was an absolute nightmare because my goal was not to give away any facial expressions throughout the entire mediation. I’m probably the wrong person to ask. But yes, I do think that it is important. It’s like where you sit in a room used to be important. It’s not important now because you’re not sitting in a room. Now, even things like having your camera raised up looking down on your is better than the other way around.

I did a webinar the other day and we were talking about negotiation and some of the strategies. I explained that my biggest facial expression is to raise my eyebrows about my glasses cause that’s about what I can do that I know everyone’s going to see. There’s a bit of a joke because this is all forced, it’s a little contrived. I think that people tend ultimately to be themselves once they once they start the process and once they get comfortable with it. Yes, it is important. I think is much more important for personal injury plaintiffs, I believe, than for other types of mediated claims to have that connection. A lot of is making sure that they have the opportunity to say what they need to say and to express it in their own words, in their own way. Clearly, people should listen respectfully and if they’re not listening respectfully, then it’s going to have a very detrimental effect on the ability to resolve that case.

When you start a matter, do you set the ground rules?

I think most mediators have little speech that they have to give. When I qualified as a mediator, I found out that you actually have to give it because some states require you to give it as part of the ethics rules. That did explain quite a lot. To me it didn’t explain why it went on for 30 minutes in some cases, but I did at least understand that it was necessary. But again, the more work you have done beforehand as the mediator with the parties, that’s one of the great things about online mediation, you can have effectively a relationship building exercise. Maybe by going through Zoom, maybe by talking about a mediation brief beforehand, maybe connect them with the client’s attorney and the client together to make sure everything works so that the first time you see them isn’t the opening session. I think that goes a long way to making everybody relaxed and in a position to participate fully.

I appreciate that for businesses feeling pressure to resolve disputes quickly, especially in a time where the global economy is volatile, what considerations should they take when determining if the transition to virtual dispute resolution is the right approach? What should they think about?

My personal take on mediations is not that it was a successful mediation if we reached a resolution. It was always did I learn something that was important to my risk assessment by the end of the mediation? And, the reason I say that is that a lot of people look at a mediation as, “we have to get our case resolved and if we don’t get our case resolved, it was a complete failure and the mediation was useless. Let’s go litigate for six months.” Then, the lawyers will phone after six months and probably come up with a number that was incredibly near to whatever they had agreed in the mediation. If you take a step back and think about how sophisticated clients assess their strategy, what you’re really doing is assessing the risk-reward of any particular piece of an offer, any resolution strategy. Most times when you go into a mediation, you will learn something about that about your case that you did not know beforehand. Sometimes you’ll never know it, because even if you resolve the case, it wouldn’t be given up because it needs to be given up. Maybe strayed a little bit from the question, but I think that if you address mediations that way, my personal view is that you should go ahead now because if you can get the case resolved, great. If you can’t get the case resolved and you learned something new to your risk assessment that impacts your valuation or the approach that you’re taking that is incredibly valuable to you and more valuable than the six months of attorney’s fees you’re going to pay in the next six months or so.

What I would say is that for you to learn something, to make your strategy better, that’s the value of bringing, it’s not the hours, it’s the consilier role. It is the ability to give your clients strategic advice to enable them and you collectively to come up with a resolution strategy. Please excuse my slightly flippant comment, but I do feel that if I was in that situation, I would want to resolve my case now if I could. But if I couldn’t, what I really want to know is what information am I missing that has prevented me from doing that?

My final general question about the topic is what is your approach to mediation?

It’s probably no surprise, particularly if you read any of my articles online, that I’m a great believer in preparation. I think the more you prepare before a mediation, the better you will be in a mediation. Maybe, that’s because I was never the best orator in the world, or maybe I wasn’t the best or most persuasive person.  What I found was that if I was the best prepared person, then my results were always better.

Just to give you an example, when I was in-house, I was very fortunate that I was able to do things such as fly my attorneys to New York to sit down and present their case prior to a mediation. If you think about it, a mediation or an arbitration, but primarily we’re talking about mediations here, your case is being resolved. That’s the end of it. If it’s a successful mediation with a resolution, then the case is over. So, if you prepare extensively for trial, you’re ready. Still things happen at trial. If you took the same approach to a mediation, the chances are you would come up with issues that you didn’t think of. So, what we would do with sit the attorney in the office with a number of the underwriting assistants, claims handlers and managers, not just from the particular line of business but from other lines of business. We would tell the attorney beforehand to prepare the best possible case. I want visual aids, computer aided design. I want everything. I want you to put your very best case on because we’re resolving this case in the mediation. Literally nine times out of ten, they would come in without any graphics, without any brief. They would also make comments, “The other side can’t prove this. We can show that.” Then, when they were asked where their evidence was and is it in an admissible format, they would say they were going to get that in the next deposition. The point I’m making is we would make them come back, and for them it’s great because they got twice the number of chargeable hours, but from our perspective it was also great because we had a much, much better handle on our exposure and our risk tolerance going into the mediation. The chances of our claims handlers going into that mediation without anticipation of what the other side may or may not do and what the arguments would be, was very slim. Which meant that they didn’t have to phone me in the middle of the mediation and ask for authority because they already got the necessary authority. We had already valued it enough. That’s on the insurance side, but it’s exactly the same in the corporate side. The more effort you put into it, the better your result will be. Don’t treat it as a cheaper alternative. It is much cheaper, but I think it’s much more cost effective, which is probably the better way to look at it.

Gina Rubel

If we tie the whole conversation together and we talk about the type of work you did in aviation and crisis communications: we tell our clients all the time, if you’re going to be presenting something in any public, you must be prepared and we use the five P’s: “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.” It’s important, whether you’re speaking to the court of public opinion, if you’re speaking to the media, if you’re speaking to opposing counsel or dealing with a neutral or panel of neutrals, to be prepared. That holds true for everything we do.

Do you have any questions for me?

Nigel Wright

I was actually going to ask you about your crisis communication experience. One of the things I loved when I was doing the crisis communication work was, we used to have these great plans and you used to have everybody in place. But how do you deal with the situation where you have a wonderful plan, everything’s great, but it hasn’t been communicated widely and the CEO happens to be on holiday that day and it all goes horribly wrong. How do you deal with that situation? Because I think that’s something I always used to worry about intently.

Gina Rubel

We’ve been in that situation where we could not reach a CEO who was on vacation literally in the rainforest with no cell phone service. We were fortunate that we had a second-in-command that we could eventually reach. Things will go wrong in crisis communications. There will be glitches and if we learn nothing from COVIA-19, there were very few businesses that had pandemic plans in place. In the financial industry and the banking industry, they have pandemic plans. They have to by the regulators. I don’t have another client besides our banking client that had a pandemic plan in place. We’ve really had to be agile. Agile means having small teams who can make decisions quickly and execute on those decisions and communicate widely to their audience and also understand how those communications have to play out. It’s also having a level of trust with your partners. If you’re working with a crisis communications external team and your outside counsel and general counsel and people in your company, you really have to be able to make fast decisions. A lot of the things that go wrong are because, especially in the court of public opinion, companies haven’t decided on how they were going to address the situation quickly enough. So, a lot of criticism comes in where, let’s say for example, you have a MeToo litigation and the managing partner of a major Am Law 100 law firm is implicated in something or accused of something, and it’s not until five days later when somebody from the firm makes a statement. At that point, you know that there was this giant committee of lawyers in 30 offices, all of whom had to decide on whether or not they were going to use the word and or, in the statement. You just can’t do that.

There’s no easy way to make companies be more agile than to teach them to prepare, practice and train do tabletops. Like you said, actually go through a scenario. A lot of, a lot of our clients who are down South who had to deal with hurricane Katrina have been much more agile in this pandemic because they had to work from home already. They’ve gone through this process. Places where they’re prone to natural disasters, we’re much more prepared. They’ve already tested their infrastructure. They’ve made sure people can work from home and work remotely. They’ve made sure people are getting the food and the resources they need. If we do nothing else than learn from COVID-19, one of the things I’ve told many, many people that I’ve counseled and trained in webinars is to keep a COVID-19 notebook, a management notebook, and write down everything you think you’re doing right, everything you think you can do better, and everything you’ve learned. Then, turn that into a crisis plan for the future. A long-winded answer, but things do go wrong and sometimes you have no control. I will tell you, there have been many a day that I have said, “thank God we don’t represent that company.”

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Connect & Learn More

Nigel Wright

Website: www.milesmediation.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigel-wright-7a08bb2b/

Gina Rubel

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