Crisis-Command Authority Board Adviser

The mandate

The board repeatedly encounters the same unresolved question: when a sanctions alert, port closure, cyber outage, margin call and safety event interact, who is authorised to halt a desk, divert physical cargo, communicate externally or commit emergency liquidity? Existing plans name teams but not collision rules between commercial, legal, safety and financial authority. Recent exercises produced parallel command rooms and incompatible clocks.

The adviser will contribute three days each month, including preparation, two private chair consultations and participation across five board simulations. A material emerging event receives an initial challenge response within six Singapore business hours, followed by a written authority observation within two days. Management remains responsible for running exercises, maintaining plans and acting during any live incident.

The appointment runs for ten months through one cyclone season and two major market-liquidity exercises. A further three-month term may be considered only after the committee documents an unresolved authority collision and refreshes independence. Renewal is neither automatic nor linked to the number of risks, findings or simulations that management chooses to keep open.

This adviser carries no line authority and no executive responsibility, cannot command a desk, stop a vessel, approve liquidity, make disclosure, contact a regulator or direct an emergency response. The role is to expose ambiguity, test the sequence and press directors on delegations before pressure arrives. Formal accountabilities remain with executives, designated incident commanders and the board.

Current or recent interests involving commodity merchants, exchanges, shipowners, insurers, banks, security firms, response vendors, governments or sanctions counsel require disclosure. A relationship tied to a scenario removes the adviser from that exercise and its board discussion. Fees cannot depend on incident frequency, avoided loss, insurance recovery, regulatory outcome, trading performance or continuation of the appointment.

Why the board wants this voice

Functional plans are individually mature, yet their authorities collide precisely when several threats arrive together. Executives naturally defend the control domain they lead, leaving the chair without experienced challenge on command design under time compression. The board wants someone who has watched real crises punish elegant but ambiguous delegations.

What you will own

• Press directors on who may pause trading, redirect cargo, commit liquidity, notify authorities and speak publicly under each scenario.
• Test authority collisions across commercial opportunity, sanctions caution, physical safety, contractual duty and solvency protection.
• Examine escalation clocks, deputies, quorum constraints, regional handoffs and evidence needed for irreversible crisis choices.
• Shape five compound simulations that deny convenient information and force named executives to exercise reserved powers.
• Challenge whether command records distinguish facts, assumptions, advice, dissent, decisions and later revision under pressure.
• Surface fragile dependencies involving communication channels, legal availability, bank access, vessel control and jurisdictional reach.
• Give the committee an authority heat map, observed failure modes, unresolved delegations and focused rehearsal agenda.

Candidate qualifications

• Advised or led through multi-domain commodity, trading, maritime or financial crises with genuinely compressed decision clocks.
• Understands how sanctions, physical safety, contracts, liquidity, disclosure and reputation create conflicting command imperatives.
• Designed executive and board simulations that revealed authority failure rather than rewarding rehearsed procedural compliance.
• Can challenge forcefully without appropriating regulated, legal, operational or incident-command responsibilities from accountable officers.
• Has worked across Asian, European, Middle Eastern and American crisis structures with jurisdiction-specific escalation constraints.
• Maintained independence while advising boards whose commercial performance, insurers, banks and government relationships shaped crisis choices.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend five Singapore simulations and the Geneva board session within the ten-month appointment.
• Will disclose merchant, exchange, shipowner, insurer, bank, government, counsel and crisis-vendor relationships before access.
• Brings lived compound-crisis command experience; policy authorship or tabletop facilitation alone does not qualify.
• Accepts no trading, vessel, liquidity, disclosure, regulatory, executive, incident-command or voting authority.

1. 49 words maximum. Which authority collision in a real compound crisis produced the most damaging delay you observed?
2. 49 words maximum. What current commodity, maritime, bank or government relationship could require your recusal?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you prevent a board simulation from validating the crisis plan it is meant to challenge?