Peter Baines OAM

Peter Baines OAM's Biography

Peter Baines OAM would spend the best part of his career leading teams in the face of international crisis and disaster and make no mistake what we are experiencing right now is a global crisis.

Baines was part of the leadership team that deployed into Bali after the bombings of 2002, claiming 202 lives. He was the leader of the Australian and International teams in Thailand following the South East Asian tsunami that claimed 5395 lives in Thailand alone.

He would spend several months assisting in the building of the international response to face what was and what remains the world’s largest Disaster Victim Identification effort. The challenges in Thailand including establishing a plan that involved the building of a strategic response bringing together over 450 forensic staff from 36 different countries, quickly.

Following the work in Thailand, Baines was seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science as an expert in reacting to and leading international response following crisis and disaster. He spent 12 months working with Interpol in Lyon, France developing an international strategy on how to respond to acts of terrorism related to Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear threats and acts of terrorism.

Baines wrote a classified paper that was shared with member countries of Interpol on how to respond and deal with specific acts of terrorism. After his work with Interpol he would go on and provide advice to the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime in South East Asia on counter terrorism and capacity building.

He was then engaged by the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to assist in the development of the disaster management plans and provide leadership advice to their lead response agencies. He would continue his international work again deploying to Japan following the 2011 tsunami.

There is no question when in comes to responding to Crisis and Disaster on large scale Baines has had the experience, where it matters most, on the ground. What he has learnt from that is the need to develop a response according to the challenges and conditions that are faced. Plans that might have been developed in the safety and sanctuary of quiet times can often be found to be redundant.

But it was the work in Thailand that brought the biggest change. In response to the needs of the children left without a home or parents he would form Hands Across the Water and commence fundraising in Australia to build them a home.  Sixteen years after starting the charity he now spends much of his time helping other charity and business leaders on how they can and indeed should benefit from their engagement with their community partners through corporate social responsibility programs. 

In these challenging times Peter is able to bring to you:

The confidence of having someone on your team that has been there before and knows, the future might be different, but it will be ok;

The experience of leading in unsettled and deeply challenging times;

The agility to make decisions and respond to the ever changing environment;

Using the Crisis Clock, a model he developed from years in the field leading teams in response to crisis and disasters, he details the various stages you and your team will go through in dealing with this crisis and how best to manage the teams you lead;

The lessons learnt in leading a communication strategy dealing with emotionally charged stakeholders who are faced withgreat uncertainty; and

The proven ability in building teams to deal with what are often seen as impossible challenges.

Ways Peter can positively impact your business:

Provide assistance to your leadership team in developing a strategic response to the challenges faced;

Advise your board on the best approach;

Speak with your community providing an authoritative voice on how to deal with and respond to crisis and disaster;

Let him take your team through a desk stop simulation exercise called Operation Delta where the team is faced with escalating scenarios that challenges their leadership and decision making beliefs.

Speaking Topics Include

LEADERSHIP MATTERS

In times of crisis, leaders are defined both by their actions and by their ability to make decisions without deliberation - to act with confidence but without recklessness. One of the most positive things about working in disasters is that True Leaders are quickly identified. Without the constraints of an organisation chart or an imposed management structure, authentic leaders will rise.

The unforgettable messages that Peter shares with his audience via a unique storytelling ability come from working in times of real crisis. His leadership theories have been tested at the coal face. In the face of terrorism or leading international humanitarian responses, Peter knows what is required to operate at the pointy end of the ship.

EXPERIENCES MATTER - Results Driven by Experiences

How do you reverse AIDS within children suffering from HIV? How do you change the lives of young girls who have been trafficked into a life of forced child prostitution? The same way you build deep engagement with your business, your team and your family. You create experiences.

It’s the power of experiences, that make us who we are and help us shape what we want to become as individuals, families, leaders and successful teams.

I stumbled across the deep value of creating experiences for people whilst trying to raise money and create hope and opportunities for children.  What I found was that if I concentrated on giving rich experiences for those I was working with then it became easy to achieve the end result. And the end result for me was providing the simplest of opportunities for children who lived without the most basic of rights and privileges.

What I came to realise was that the more rewarding, the more engaging the experience was, the easier it was to build growth, sustainability and success in what I was trying to achieve. So what have been the rich experiences and the outcomes that have followed?

In 2009 I led a group of 16 bike riders from Bangkok to Khao Lak. A distance of 800km’s that we covered in eight days. Our combined fundraising saw us raise $178,000. A great effort but pulling into the orphanage surrounded by the children for who we were riding for, seeing their faces, seeing the tears running down the cheeks of the riders, I knew right then we were onto something special.

If growth is one of the measures of success, then based upon the growth of the bike ride, you would deem it an overwhelming success. Four years after the first ride we now run back to back rides that fill to our capacity of 50 per ride within a matter of days and in 2013, we raised over $800,000.

Growth is certainly an indicator of success, but what about return business? In 2013 on our Northern ride, 79% of the riders were back for their second or third time. Such is the strength of the experience a family of four returned after their first ride in 2012, to ride with us again in 2013, meaning they had raised over $80,000 in eighteen months. Why, because of the richness of the experience.

Coming from rich experiences is engagement.  But engaging your team, supporters or clients is only half the task and if you stop with engagement you miss the opportunity to build commitment within them. You can have an engaged group, but without commitment they will like what you do and support your efforts, but we want their efforts.

And from what I’ve experienced since I started obsessing about experiences it’s the three elements of Experiences, Engagement and Commitment that lead you to results.

The results I have driven are through the charity I formed in 2006 after leading Australian and International teams into Thailand following the South East Asian tsunami and the identification of the thousands of souls that perished in that tragic event. It was those experiences that led me to work with Interpol in Lyon France leading an International Counter Terrorism project, it was the same experiences that had me spend time working with the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime, and deploy into disaster areas such as Saudi Arabia after the floods in Jeddah and Japan following the tragic earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Those experiences, good and bad have positioned me to now bring about a very different kind of result.

In 2010, I took responsibility for a HIV orphanage in the north of Thailand. Children were dying on a monthly and at times weekly basis. Since assuming control of that home, not one child as died in the past three years. At the same orphanage we have raised the CD4 count of the children and in the process eliminated in all but two children AIDS.

Further up the Mekong River we are now building six homes that will provide a safe haven for 90 girls who will be removed from the sex industry having been trafficked into this unimaginable life. All of this and so many other achievements are possible based upon the rich experiences we provide.

And what I’ve come to realise is that if we can bring about such significant change and quite literally stop children dying surely our teams, our businesses and leaders can also benefit from the same formula. What modern family today wouldn’t be richer for a shared experience? If you and your leaders are not engineering shared experiences, you’re missing opportunities.

I don't think there is any magic bullet for leadership or driving results but if there was one thing I think you could obsess about, its shared experiences.

Key Takeouts

• Understanding why Experiences Matter;

• The value of Shared Experiences;

• How to build Engagement based upon Experiences;

• The key difference between Engagement and Commitment;

• The importance of recognising Results as part of the process; &

• How to engineer shared experiences within your leaders, team, social venture or family unit;

• Identifying the relationship between the four key elements of Experiences, Engagement, Commitment and Results;

• Examining the opportunities within your organisation, social venture, family or leadership team to build shared experiences.

Research and Tailoring

• The value of shared experiences has worked for me, but how does it work for you and your industry?

• Prior to presenting to your conference, team or group of leaders, I will examine the opportunities for experiences that are industry related; and

• I will build and present specific case studies, that demonstrate the value and opportunities for creating shared experiences relevant to you