I took this photo a couple of years back in Berlin. I guess it was really lucky that I was there on a day they had all this snow – and it must have been fairly lucky that these to guys had the gear required to go out running in the snow.
Either that or it snows regularly there and people are prepared. How come we know this is going to happen, but many entities are unprepared to continue operations in extreme weather?
Tim Armit (in UK) posted a note on the Yahoo discussbusinesscontinuity Group outlining how he called American Express only to get a message that the office was closed due to the weather – and then the call is ended.
Perhaps that is the extent of their plan – I have seen that before and refer to it as the “last one out shut the gate” BC strategy. Normally it is implemented without the company realising – they think they have some form of working strategy.
Jan Husdal also posted about the disruptions hitting Europe and comparing to similar issues last year. Could it be that people have forgotten? That would seem unlikely.
Why is it that companies invest in all these BC/RM initiatives but still do not seem prepared for what is surely a High Probablility/High Impact event?
One reason that I have seen in a number of clients is the audience they write their plans and strategies for.
That audience is the auditors.
Auditor plans are really wonderful documents, often very thick and very attractive to look at. They are more often than not, worthless for Incident Managers, but they are not written for these people.
The second reason I have encountered, again in too many client sites, is the focus on BC and Risk Plans as the end product.
We need to build capabilities. The capability to respond and recover – not the capability to publish a document.
Business Continuity – don’t leave the office without it!
Does anybody have a similar experience to Tim?
Hope you have a good weekend up there in Europe, take care.
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