… Retrospective

I started this blog about 3 1/2 years ago, at the time I was planning to write everyday. I didn’t achieve that, but did average 3 posts a week. I would anxiously watch the stats to see if anybody was reading my stuff.

It was exciting when people came and read, even more so on the limited times they posted a comment.

In the past 12 months I have only managed 2 posts per month, on average. But despite that there is still a very healthy number of visitors, much more than when I started and was writing regularly.

There is a lesson here for our BC practice and to promote resilience. You need to make a start, build a stable and sustainable base – both in terms of framework and relationships. Then when you have the slow years, perhaps due to lack of investment (GFC) or other times of upheaval in your business you still have that body of work to fall back on. And you can pick up and move it forward when the opportunity presents.

Many years ago the organisation I worked for experienced a major incident – a siege with armed gunman then a big fire in the building. At that time I had the role of CIO and the organisation had no BC or DR plans of any kind. I had only been with that organisation for 9 months and my previous job had been head of BCM.

So I called up my previous team and asked them to bring a bunch of plan templates and completed plans that we could use as a guide. I was in another city at the time, and the team and materials arrived before I did. Our leadership had embraced the BC team, and started to adapt the materials before I arrived back in town.

It worked fine, our recovery went quickly and smoothly, in great part because we had an outstanding CEO.

There is a lot of sameness about what we do in BCM, many of the basic deliverables are commodities and you would be surprised at how much you could achieve using somebody else’s plan.

Certainly it is better to have a custom product, like it is better to have custom made cloths, but if you cannot afford it – than anything is better than nothing.

Just like the way that organisational commitment to BCM can waiver, in the past year my focus has been more on conferences, webinars and longer articles than on the blog.

But this week is the kickstart of the Blog Continuity programme. The solid base has facilitated appropriate resilience, and the opportunity and resources are available to build again.

In honour of the base of earlier work, This week is “retrospective week” – a revisit of some earlier posts that have some significance going forward.

All that remains is to discover what it takes to get somebody to comment or join in discussion!