TIP – Increase you chance of success…
Meet with upper management early and often
As early as possible in building your business continuity program you should meet with upper management. Have a nice discussion regarding the scope and goals of the business continuity program. If upper management actively endorses your efforts you will get cooperation from process owners and their direct reports. You will be gold.
On the other-hand, if upper management does not understand the value business continuity brings to them and the organization they will not actively support you. Unfortunately, you will most likely be burnt toast.
It is a top down process. It is your duty to make it crystal clear to upper management that everyone’s job, including theirs, will be in jeopardy when – not if – a disruption occurs and you do not have a resilient and well tested business continuity program in place.
Ask probing questions. Actively listen. Learn upper management’s goals and expectations for the business continuity program. Notice their body language and inflections. One of my favorite questions is ‘what keeps you up at night?’ That question has proven to be worth its weight in gold to me. Try it and let me know how it works for you.
What keeps them up at night will include:
- Cyber hacking related issues
- Active shooter
- IT system availability
- If you are in manufacturing and rely on a critical piece of hardware that is a single point of failure you will certainly also learn about that
- Weather related threats
- Union strikes
- Pandemic
Actively listen, listen and listen some more. Write down as many pain-points as possible while maintaining eye-contact. Add the notes to a database or spreadsheet. Stay organized. Soon you will have an avalanche of information flowing through your desk. Staying organized will serve you well as you build your program and hit all the targets.
Continue to meet with management regularly over the life of your program.
Tip – if you are speaking more than they are during the meeting then you have a problem. Dial it back. You will be happy you did.
