Archive for Crisis Management
… wanting your life back
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Perhaps Tony Hayward (soon-to-be-former Group CEO at BP) had a valid point when he lamented the loss of his private life. Anybody who has been involved in a real crisis management role knows that it tends to absorb a lot of your time – most crises don’t stop for evenings and weekends.
My current BAU “Crisis Management” role is certainly absorbing my time to write. In fact it tends to absorb the available intellectual energy to apply to such activity as much as it eats the time to read and write.
Again that is an expected feature of any crisis response. Hopefully we all have that aspect included in our plans and strategies.
The weekly effort applied to this engagement is probably 20+% higher than my previous average working week. In resilience thinking we are often trying to find the way to ‘bounce forward’ from a disruption – the up side for my current situation is that I bill by the hour.
With my limited free-time/energy I have been able to keep up with the reading and conversations required by the Working Group to establish a set of Resilience Awards here in Australia, plus the initial effort to get engaged in the BCI’s ‘Discipline Mapping’ working group – more on both those initiatives in other posts.
As a result I find myself with >50 unread articles in my Google Reader, many feeds that deserve more time marked as read and an increasing number of blog posts on other sites that I was initially motivated to comment on. Plus an increasing sense of frustration at not having the energy or inspiration to write.
It takes a concerted effort to get started with a blog, but when you find your voice (which I guess comes from the motivation and passion) then it is amazing how it becomes a part of what we do and how we perceive ourselves.
I am constantly amazed and inspired by the output, and quality, of commentators such as Chris Brogan (on Social Media) and John Glenn (in our own professional space) – not sure how these guys keep it up.
Just wanted to let people know that I am still here and getting back into the blog habit.
Is anybody still reading and subscribed?
If you haven’t already – click the RSS Subscription link (top right) – that way you don’t have to keep coming back to check for new posts.
… application of BC skills to BAU
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Since returning from WCDM last month I have began a new engagement with my largest client. This role involves the application of Incident Management and Control Room discipline to the delivery of a major new IT/IS change program.
The program is in the final stage of a 4 year delivery cycle, and rapid response to defects and outages is critical, along with simple (but effective) delivery of ‘intelligence’ to Executive Management.
This is a great example of where people who have developed skills in the BC domain can add value to the day-to-day operation of their business.
If your company/client is not in the business of providing BC services – then BC is not a ‘core’ focus area for your company. You may argue that it should be, but it rarely is. Simply providing governance and oversight is rarely the core business of anybody, yet it seems to be the primary focus of many in this field today.
Not surprising then that we often do not get any respect – as John Glenn commented on his blog recently.
I expect the central BC folks in any company to be skilled at Command Post/Control Room disciplines. In particular they need to be able to contribute to the Planning/Intelligence capability in a significant way.
It is a myth that the BC folks will run the company in a crisis. At the other extreme of popular BC-culture is the idea that you go and play golf in crisis (no role in the recovery). Those who believe the myth are self-deluded, those who follow the later view make themselves irrelevant to their company.
If you dont have these Incident Management/Crisis Management skills and capability in your BC group – go and develop them. It is a first step to making your BCM Program relevant to your Executive.
There is another aspect we need to recognise if we want to become relevant. As I noted above, the vast majority of companies are not in the BC business. So unless you have some other skills and knowledge (other than claiming specialist BC expertise) you may struggle to become relevant.
BC folks are well positioned to understand all areas of the business. But knowing who to send templates to and collect reports from just wont cut it. You will need to know what they do, why it is important and, to some extent, how they do it. Then you can contribute a little more to the BAU process.
We need to develop wider management and leadership skills to really take a position of relevance. Diversification, an essential aspect of your own skill set.
We also need to take a stand about the number of people with no practical, real-world skills but holding “BC Certification” (because they can recite the text book) who are appearing everywhere and adding little to the relevance of BC to the business.
What are you doing to make your BC Program relevant to your organisation?
Links
Photo Credit – the control room at Alcatraz. I have a more modern typewriter in mine.
John Glenn – on the Rodney Dangerfield profession
