Despite the lack of recently written content, I see that there are still visitors to this blog. Those dedicated readers may have noticed that we suffered a supply chain disruption recently.
Business Continuity is a relatively newcomer to the area of supply chain management and supply chain risk, perhaps this is part of the growing and maturing of our discipline? Tim Armit has triggered a good conversation on that recently, please join in.
Just like the physical supply chain, a blog has a supply chain too. Jan Husdal has a full analysis of that idea, and you can apply it to a range of different contexts. Applying Supply Chain thinking to the delivery of information systems and services is the subject of an article I am currently writing for Continuity Insights.
But none of these are actually what has disrupted my blog. My supply chain disruptions have been at a number levels;
- On the operational and routine level – my hosting provider had several weeks of technical disruption, and therefore my blog has been unavailable. This has been sporadic, but still not the service I pay for.
- The end result of this was I switched providers. Bad example of BC for them , standard BC/risk practice by me.
- Of course such a strategy brings a few more days of disruption as content is moved and DNS resolves itself.
- Operational disruption overcome – but still no real “blog continuity”.
- On the tactical level the disruption was competing priorities – time needed for important stuff like paid activities; end of financial year; watching the new season of 24.
- Just like BC in the real world, we have to divide our time and resources across competing priorities.
- And just like in the real world we focus on what generates revenue and immediate compliance activities over those we know we really should pay attention to – but we don’t see as important.
- The other two levels didn’t matter as I had lost interest at the strategic level. The relevance of this blogging project had waned.
- I had a greater interest in presenting at conferences, and writing longer form papers.
- The total lack of engagement from readers was another contributor.
- Again, like BC and risk in the real world, when what is being done is not relevant to the strategic level – then nobody much cares if it gets done or not.
This post is the first in a Category labelled “Next Generation BC practice”. It is a category of thinking and debate that does have some strategic relevance with me – and that will hopefully be reflected in my time allocation and publishing operations. I hope it has relevance and attention from readers also – as it is a critical area of current debate.
The BC discipline and practices of the future also have a supply chain, and should be analysed accordingly. That supply chain starts with the practices of the past, and has to find a way through the practices, and perspectives, of the present before it can move into the future. Both the past and the present contain potential disrupters, and diversions of that future.
That future will also be a challenge for BC to find the connection between the strategic and the operational – in a similar way as I have had to with the blog. Perhaps the greatest threat to the future of BC is the same as the threat to continuity of my blog.
It all starts with me.
I (and my fellow practitioners) have to change what we do – and more importantly , how we think.
My first response was to change the perspective that I write from, you can see my new perspective in the picture above. So far the change of perspective has paid off with this and a couple of new posts in the pipeline.
What can you do to open your mind to the potential futures of the discipline?
Can you change your perspective in the present? See potentially different future practices?
Leave a Reply