Business Continuity Planning

When we talk to people about business continuity planning, we often face some resistance: "Why should I do this? I'm not going to find this document and read it during a disaster."

Funny enough, we tend to agree – which is why when it comes to contingency plans, our motto is to put the planning process above the plans.

Incidents and disasters are, by nature, unpredictable. It would be impossible to try to predict every potential disaster scenario and make step-by-step plans for it. But the key element to preparedness is not creating a comprehensive manual to recover after every incident, but rather, to engage in critical thinking and discussion around how an incident should be managed, based on the assets that have been impacted.

Too often, plans are created in silos, completed by each department head (or someone s/he has assigned the job to) and submitted to someone who does a cursory review for completeness. The missing element is discussion and coordination with other managers and with leadership. Our planning process focuses on putting in place the decisions and tools that allow for effective command and control of an incident. As a result, your team develops answers to the following:

1. Who will be responsible for what during an incident
2. What is the chain of command for each critical role
3. What types of decisions need to be escalated to higher levels of management
4. What resiliency strategies are viable options for each business process, and what needs to be put into place for them to work
5. How critical resources will be distributed if there is a shortage
6. Which staff members will need to relocate, and where
7. How information will be distributed and communicated to staff, partners, clients, etc.
8. How leaders can quickly get an update on the status of the crisis

As a result of these discussions, the plan becomes a documentation of decisions that have been made ahead of time, and serves as a reference for critical information that may be difficult to access during a crisis; consequently, managers understand the big picture of how other teams will be responding to the crisis and know the priorities of senior leadership.