I read an article on Continuity Central by Nick Johnson, called
BUSINESS CONTINUITY AND THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF“.
I have to admit I missed the point on the first reading, as I had to read it again to understand what he was talking about.
I guess my problem with understanding his point was that for many years I have always asked clients about their fears – the threats and risks that keep them awake at night. If you want to get these Executives attention it is always helpful to know what they care about, or are concerned about.
If you want to design exercises that get their attention and engagement, then starting with an area of the business (and a risk) they are concerned about is always helpful.
I guess the trick is how, and more importantly, why, you use this fear – rather than just the idea using fear at all.
The article describes a BC practitioner trying to scare people into co-operating, using it as a device to sell the need to engage in BC activities – and ultimately to sell themselves. It talks about the negative connotations of this and suggests wonderful, positive approaches that could be adopted instead.
Actually I think it misses the real point. It is not about positive or negative, but about being appropriate.
If you sell the need to engage in BC activity based on fear, then you are ‘crying wolf’. You are a fear monger, and while you may get some initial co-operation it will not be sustainable.
Ultimately you are doing us all a disservice. You are saying there is no intrinsic value in what you have to offer.
Worse, when you try that stunt with Executives you just re-enforce that what you are doing is not relevant to them.
The article also highlights another of the “misnomers” – this one is the word continuity. BCM is already about making a critical process more robust and “disaster tolerant”, has been for many years. Those who are still only looking at when the process stops are practising recovery – not continuity.
Why are we afraid to highlight and label ‘bad practice’ when we find it?
Don’t limit your thinking to recovery planning – in fact worry less about planning and more about engaging with the business, establish a relationship first.
Explore areas that concern business leaders, talk about the aspects that they are afraid of – what keeps them awake at nights. Then go away and investigate the issues (be that single points of failure, critical person dependence, what response/recovery capability exists, etc) and make sensible suggestions on improvements.
Try this approach and you will have engaged with them to solve a business problem, addressed something they actually care about. Made yourself relevant.
Alternatively you could just turn up with a template, expecting them to do all the work, and a compliance checklist. Easy and low risk (short-term) for you – but keep your CV up to date.
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