Archive for People
… 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.
… resilience starts at home.
Posted by: | CommentsWe all talk a lot about the importance of the “people” aspects for Business Continuity – and it is more significant to position this aspect correctly when looking at the concept of resilience. Too often it is just talk, not really backed by understanding and appropriate actions.
Often we need direct involvement in a situation to really appreciate the true meaning. We also never know exactly how we will react until the situation actually arises – exercises and training only go so far.
I was exposed to the implications of trauma in a disaster situation back in 1989 after the Newcastle Earthquake, then had to apply these lessons in 1993 with direct involvement in the ‘Jolimont Siege’ and recovery (in Canberra). Valuable lessons, but often they lack that ‘edge’ that comes from direct personal impact and loss.
Things came a little closer to home when we went to Phuket for Christmas 2004, but despite the inundation of the hotel and evacuation it became more of a concern for the folks at home than it was for us on the ground. It certainly highlighted the importance of community in the response and recovery situation.
The personal impact hit directly, and significantly, a couple of weeks back. My father was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. It is a ‘worst case’ scenario.
Remarkably one of his early comments after being told of the outcome was to highlight the need to focus on getting his book finished.
Bouncing back from the impact is not enough – it is about being able to bounce forward.
Resilience starts with people. Their attitudes and the strength of their character are best measured in the hours of great challenge.
It spreads to a community (or organisation) when the values and behaviours that support bouncing forward are shared. This culture is created as a result of ongoing and regular interactions, and transmitted via a range of communal artefacts and rituals. It is not a switch that we get to turn on after an outage!
The culture of failure is transmitted the same way – it just replicates a different set of shared values and behaviours.
Do you know which culture is being transmitted in your community/organisation?
Hint – look for the role models.
Hopefully I can use the role model to also bounce forward after this recent break in transmission.
