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The Importance of Maintaining Critical Contacts in Your Favorites List

Writer's picture: Mike LarsenMike Larsen

As I sat down at the airport waiting for my first flight of the day, it hit me that I have an unofficial routine of dialing in some of my communication processes. I make some minor tweaks to my phone that make my life easier and my communication more efficient. During the course of our work coms is often time sensitive and though we use a variety of systems including 2 way radios, messaging (most often), but, when we make a phone call it's often a more critical and / or urgent reason. Planning for this became a process that I've done for years, but never really thought about as a planning or preparing tool. But just like mapping things out, it's part of my routine and shifts me into a operational mindset.


If you run an iPhone there's a "Favorites" list within the phone app that allows some additional features for your most important contacts. The settings allows for calls to come through when silenced and also allows for quick access to those you may need to get ahold of. I'll go out on a limb and assume that the "green bubble phones" also have this feature, but I don't personally have knowledge for non iOS systems.


 

Normal Setup

My day to day list consists of family members, the Raven team and some good friends who I yak to regularly or would call upon in a time of need. This is the standard, never changing list. The top of the list is most important and most frequent contacts with minimal changes. The middle are my frequent business and social connections and then the bottom of the list is where they become situational and the topic for this post.


Making the Modifications

We work with a consistent list of event planners, site security professionals, executive protection teams and colleagues around the world. But we are not on all of their trips and they're not on all of ours. Within our RAVEN ops plan for each event / detail we identify critical contacts. These are decision makers or problem solvers that we may rely on or our clients who may rely on us for immediate assistance. These are the contacts that get temporary assignment to the favorite list due to the increased need for access to them or from them to us.


These are the 8 contacts I've added for this trip.

  • 3 other members of our team

  • Lead event planner

  • Event manager

  • Executive

  • Hotel security manager's cell phone

  • Hotel security control center.


This is a pretty typical size adjustment to the favorites list and they will remain there until my final layover on the way home. Of course, depending on what happens it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to add another contact or two. So don't forget to stay flexible and adapt to the situation at hand.


This little bit of planning and ongoing consistency helps me remain effective and efficient in communicating when needed. These items may see simple, but it's often the simple things that are overlooked prior to an emergency or need for urgent communication.


 

Messaging side note: Another thing we do in advance is setup group chats. These include key people and often have a group name and icon / image to make them standout. Again for iPhone users it's helpful to pin them to the top of the messaging app so they are quick and easy to find... More on this later!


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