New Year, New Approach to Resiliency? 

I talk to companies every week about their Business Resiliency programs, and many of them ask me the same question: What’s the fastest thing I can do to improve the resiliency of my business? Well, in the spirit of New Year celebrations and embracing attainable goals, I had an idea about a new approach for businesses trying to get their programs off the ground. 

Building a Top Tier Resiliency Program

I read this nearly entirely unrelated article on Harvard Business Review the other day, and it got me thinking – the problems that can lead to dysfunctional teams and strife in the workplace are the same types of problems that will cause issues when a business is trying to recover from some sort of interruption. The same sorts of problems with efficiency and focus on shared goals can happen during a recovery if expectations aren’t clear, just like they can when you’re dealing with someone who isn’t a good team player.  However, even if businesses do not have the time, knowledge, or resources, to build and mature a top tier resiliency program, just about every business knows enough about themselves and their employees to figure out what people’s roles should be in an emergency. Those expectations can be anticipated and more easily managed, at least for responding to a critical time for the business. 

“Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality.” 

Jacque Fresco, American Futurist and Inventor 

Crisis Communications

Looking back through my career in resiliency management, I’ve been witness to at least ten major system outages at companies I was employed by, and several more outages at companies while I was working at as a contractor.  (This is across several industries — financial services, insurance, logistics, manufacturing, and even some Federal contracting work.) Throughout all of these outages, communication was the single largest problem to overcome during recovery (Crisis Communications is even an important part of the Master’s Program in Communications at USC). A lack of understanding of the roles and responsibilities of various teams in the organization was the second biggest problem. 

Here’s the thing though: Businesses expect to have communication problems during an outage, so they tend to be pretty forgiving about that.  They aren’t so forgiving if they’re holding onto flawed expectations of the roles and responsibilities of other teams, and those expectations aren’t met. The biggest shouting matches during post-incident analysis meetings always seem to come down to one manager blaming another manager because there wasn’t a clear assignment of responsibilities. 

I’m not saying that putting out a list of roles and responsibilities is a replacement for well-thought-out recovery plans based on a Business Impact Analysis. I’m also not saying that listing out responsibilities could somehow supplant the need to follow best practices. What I am saying, however, is that if you don’t have *any* documentation in place to help you recover, then taking the time to figure out responsibilities of key people during an incident could be the preparatory step that saves your business. 

Even a rudimentary list of contact information for key personnel, listing their duties in response to system outages or a weather emergency, could save a tremendous amount of time if that type of response was ever needed.  Most companies already take some steps in this direction by creating emergency evacuation plans, I’m just suggesting that you take it one step further. The simple act of enumerating (and socializing) an actionable list of responsibilities and roles in response to an incident will help bring focus to the chaos when that incident happens. Everyone will be in agreement about how to proceed, and there’s far less chance that somebody’s expectations will go unmet. 

I’m also saying that your efforts will not be wasted. The time that you spend now figuring out those roles and responsibilities will lead very nicely into the recovery plans your business will eventually want to create. When you go to write plans aligned with best practices, you’re going to need to list out those types of roles and responsibilities anyway — the time, thought, and effort you put into creating a list of roles now is 100% applicable to writing plans in the future. 

“It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything.” 

Winston Churchill  

So yes, absolutely, you should follow best practices. You should develop governance, perform a formal business impact analysis, and develop recovery plans, procedures, and strategies that will meet the needs of your business. But, if you can’t do any of that, assigning roles and responsibilities as a part of incident response is probably the best place to start preparing your business. Remember, it’s not a matter of if you’re going to have to deal with some sort of incident, it’s a matter of when. 

Do you need some help taking even that first step? Sayers is here to help. We have helped dozens of companies improve their overall resiliency in today’s ever-more-complex business environment, and we can help your business too. Happy New Year! 

Questions? Contact us today to discover extensive technology solutions, services, and expertise to cover all areas of your business.