… BC Paper of the year.

I am extremely honoured to announce a newly published paper. In this case it is not just the new publication that is the thrill.

My paper, A Fork in the Road, was awarded the Business Continuity Paper of the Year 2013.

The paper is published in the latest issue of the Business Continuity and Resiliency Journal (Q1 2013) and is currently only available to subscribers.

The paper addresses all three of my key focus areas for the year;

• reflective practice, in that this paper is about education for the future of the discipline and explicitly discusses reflective practice.
• Complexity – encouraging readers to learn about the “sciences of uncertainty” and to stop talking about complexity using the language and concepts of certainty
• Delivery – encouraging practitioners to work smarter, embrace emergent practice and shape the future perceptions of the discipline.

I hope other readers will find it as useful as the judging panel did, and hopefully it will generate some discussion – either here or in other places.

Abstract

In 2013 we find ourselves at a collective fork in the road, once again considering the path we should take to the future of the discipline. The current choice is between a wider-focussed discipline called business continuity, and the ‘management systems’ highway known as business continuity management.

Moving forward may require embracing multiple alternative paths and destinations. To grow towards a wider focus we need to become a learning discipline. A wider focus on learning means we reflect on what we need to learn and how we facilitate that learning as a holistic discipline.

This paper discusses three ideas that challenge business continuity (management) professionals to think differently about learning, what it means to learn and ways that we can shape future practice.

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For those who don’t have access to the journal there will be a webinar scheduled in the next few weeks, please join me to discuss the ideas.

For those of you attending the Australasian BC Summit in June, my session “Continuity, Complexity and Co-evolution” was developed as a variation on some of the themes raised in this paper.