Crisis management - achieving control in a crisis

Dominic Cockram
Steelhenge

I will be talking on the topic of 'achieving control in a crisis' at the BCM World Conference 2013, and focussing on the key areas of:

• What happens in a crisis?
• What are the challenges you face?
• How can you achieve control in such a situation?

 

First of all, one must understand just what a crisis means in terms of the characteristics of the actual crisis itself and the impacts on an organisation.  It is generally accepted that crises are characterised by:

• Unpredictability
• Complexity
• Highly dynamic threat
• Lack of boundaries
• Scrutiny from the media, public and other interested parties
• Uncertainty

These aspects create a situation which is volatile, fast moving, confusing and enormously pressured – not to mention the potential added emotional aspects if people have been injured or killed. Into this environment comes a crisis team – brought together at very short notice, not necessarily fully in the picture and expected to lead and generate the key strategic decisions for the organisation that will steer it into calmer waters with its reputation at least intact.

No pressure then!

Whilst this pressure cannot be removed necessarily, there are a number of aspects of good practice in crisis management that can, if well applied, lead to achieving control over events and the ability of the crisis team to get on the 'front foot'.

My focus at the conference will be to bring these critical areas to life, to use practical examples of what works and what does not, and what are some of the most important areas upon which to focus in order to maximise the chances of 'taking control' and achieving a good outcome for your organisation.

Dominic will be discussing the issue of crisis management within the 'Thought Leadership' stream at the BCM World Conference on Wednesday 6th November, starting at 11:15.

How can we evaluate business continuity risks in the supply chain?

James Stevenson
Rolls-Royce plc

The experts keep telling us that supply chain risks are important and it is old news that:

• An interruption could damage the business
• Customers should work with their suppliers to reduce the risk of interruption
• Sometimes the problem is with supplier’s supplier, or their suppliers
• Unfortunately, supply chain risks seem to be increasing in scale and complexity

Occasionally, this kind of alarm call reaches the Board or Executive Management responsible for understanding the significant risks facing their business. They realise that the threat is real and ask around to see who is managing this area of risk.

In my view, BC Managers are well placed to do this and with some minor adjustments to the BCM programme we can help the business to understand and manage supply chain business continuity risks.

At the BCM Global Conference, I will introduce the work underway at Rolls-Royce plc that is helping us to:

• Assess the BCM process site by site
• Evaluate the major SC risks at owned facilities
• Evaluate the major SC risks presented by external suppliers

I hope that this will provide BC Managers with practical steps and simple suggestions to evaluate supply chain business continuity risks more effectively.

James will be discussing this and the issue of supply chain continuity within the 'BC in Action' stream at the BCM World Conference on Thursday 67h November, starting at 10:35.

Making the most of your conference experience

Andrew Scott
Business Continuity Institute

The BCI is a global organisation with Members, Forums, Chapters and Partners all across the world, but whether it is due to time, distance or perhaps even environmental concerns, unfortunately not everyone who would like to attend the BCM World Conference and Exhibition on the 6th and 7th November will be able to do so. Sadly some people will miss out…

I don’t know about you but I sometimes feel like I’m doing several jobs at once. I'm sure we all do at times but even so, and with the best will in the world, none of us will be able to attend all three streams of the conference at the same time, not to mention the packed exhibition that will be going on or the free seminar programme taking place. With so much happening, we simply cannot attend everything. Again, sadly some people will miss out…

Or will they? Of course attending the conference and listening to the individual presentations will offer the best learning experience. But just because you’re separated by several thousand miles, or only in the next lecture hall, does not mean you have to miss out completely. In this day and age, with many of us using social media, we can take the discussions out of the lecture hall and into the virtual world. We can involve in our conversations all those connected to the Institute, or business continuity in general, whether they are at the conference or not.

If you use Twitter or Linked In, or perhaps Google+ or Facebook, then why not start a discussion online and engage with many more of your BC colleagues. The bonus is that it will help make sure the conversations continue long after the conference is over.

Of course it is also important not to miss out on the earliest form of social networking - talking to your colleagues face to face, at least those who are fortunate to be there with you.

Enjoy the conference and I look forward to meeting many of you there. For those of you on Twitter, the hashtag we will be using is #BCM2013.

Identifying your organization's business continuity requirements

Kuniyuki Tashiro
InterRisk Research Institute and Consulting

When I started to learn about business continuity management 10 years ago when I worked for a manufacturing company, one of my biggest questions was how to perform a business impact analysis (BIA) in our company. I could not find enough information to improve my understanding of the methodology behind BIA at that time. Nowadays we can access a lot of information about BCM through many books, standards, guidelines, seminars, or websites. But despite the situation getting better, many people still say that BIA methodology is unclear.

I think that one of the biggest reasons is that there are various methods used for BIA at different levels or for different purposes. Furthermore, the methods should be customized for each organization and developed with an understanding of the organization's context.

However, the latest version of the Good Practice Guidelines (GPG) has great potential to help deepen our understanding of BIA because the explanation of what it involves has been substantially expanded. In the 'Analysis' section of the guidelines, the methodology for BIA is explained with four different stages - Initial BIA / Strategic BIA / Tactical BIA / Operational BIA. This does not mean you have to divide your BIA process into four stages, but that understanding the four stages of BIA with each outcome would be a strong starting point for planning BIA in your organization, and customizing/developing BIA methodology. The guidelines also provide a practical knowledge for risk assessment in BCM by discussing the benefit of a 'Threat Analysis' to identify unacceptable concentration of risk or single points of failure.

In my session - 'Analysis' on the first day of the conference - I will discuss how to apply the methodologies described in GPG to the organization by using case studies so that attendees can obtain a practical knowledge.

Kuniyuki will be discussing this within the 'BCM Lifecycle' stream at the BCM World Conference on Wednesday 6th November, starting at 15:20.

Cyber threat opportunity

Ken Simpson
The VR Group

Only a week to go until the BCM World Conference!

What if we took a different approach to our reflective learning this time?

Instead of waiting until after the conference to reflect and integrate what we have learned, what if we took a proactive approach and spent some time ahead of the conference reflecting on what aspects of our current practice we need to change.

What if that reflection also included reframing the problem – not just how can I fine tune my practices within current frameworks and constraints, but how would I want to transform my practice going forward and remove some of those constraints.

To achieve that outcome perhaps we may take a different mindset into the conference.
If we can try that exercise in critical reflection and recalibrate our mindsets, then perhaps new, or at least different, learning could emerge from the way we interact with the ideas presented and with other conference delegates.

That is the core of what my session at the conference is about, thinking differently about a problem and the way we practice our craft. I hope to encourage discussion around emerging threats and how we might use these to improve our engagement with Executives and the wider organization.

Specifically the session will present my experiences of using cyber-attacks as the focus for Executive exercises and engagement. Cyber is used as an example, and as a metaphor for emerging threats/risks, not as a vehicle to talk about a lot of IT technical stuff. Come and hear how (and why) Executives are more engaged when we use confidentiality and integrity as the disruption risk - rather than the more common approach of using availability.

As befits a 'holistic management discipline' the discussions will most likely touch on a number of issues also discussed in other sessions including:

• the critical nature of cross discipline engagement,
• thinking more like management,
• taking  a strategic rather than compliance approach, and
• the concept of resilience

 

Some pre-reading on Mindset:

 

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/the-right-innovation-mindset-can-take-you-from-idea-to-impact/

 

http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html

 

http://www.tree4health.org/distancelearning/sites/www.tree4health.org.distancelearning/files/readings/The%20Five%20Minds%20of%20a%20Manager_0.pdf

 

Ken will be discussing this and the issue of influencing key decision makers within the 'Thought Leadership' stream at the BCM World Conference on Thursday 7th November, starting at 14:50.