You may be familiar with the title of this mission statement from the 1996 movie: Jerry Maguire. The main character in the movie had a breakthrough one evening and wrote a heartfelt memo regarding the state of his industry. Truth be told, it could be a manifesto on the state of business continuity as well.
Why do so many Business Continuity (BC) Programs fail?
Business Continuity is a tough act. I have to commend managers that have been able to successfully implement programs at their organizations. Believe it or not, I have been fortunate enough to see real programs with meaningful and real results from several notable organizations. However, more often than not, many organizations struggle. Many are still in the early stages of progress.
I submit to you seven candid reasons why I believe Business Continuity programs can fail:
1. BC Program Managers that need more training and experience with business continuity. This is not a knock on the persons assigned this role. I assume that no one as a little kid wishes they could become a BC manager when they grow up. Most typically, someone is put in charge of BC as their second or third responsibility in the organization, with no prior experience or training to help them succeed. If this is you, you are not alone. Today there are many resources at hand that can help. BC seminars, workshops, as well as detailed education, training and certification programs are available from a variety of industry leading organizations in this field.
2. Organizational staff that is not enabled to contribute sufficient time and resources to the BC effort. Maybe you are one of those who have felt first-hand the eye-rolls, lack of responses to your emails, or under-attended meetings. Not many line level managers or staffers love doing the work of BC. No one wants to be involved in busy work or throwaway work, especially if it is not organized and presented well. However, effective BC Program Managers are able to manage the people and expectations in such a way that over time, can garner respect for the work. What was the anecdote from Dickey Fox in the Jerry Maguire movie? It’s all about personal relationships.
3. Leadership that is not willing to fund and support the BC program. Let me say what many are thinking. If BC is not sponsored by executive leadership, it is doomed to fail. Period. Do you want your executive leadership to pay attention to BC? This can be accomplished by one of two methods: via discovery or failure. Reactive versus Proactive. Reactive approaches that will fuel the need for BC stem from failed audits or business losses from an actual disruption. But why do that? A tabletop exercise is one of the most proactive ways to open the eyes of executive leadership regarding actual critical vulnerabilities and exposures, fiduciary responsibilities and all that – before bad things can happen.
4. A “check in the box” mentality to BC. Yes, I’ve actually seen and heard from organizations that want to do just enough to pass the next audit. Just as executive leadership support is essential to BC, having a culture of BC is also essential to the entire organization.
For me, as an employee at a previous firm that was going through an ISO audit many years ago, I remember this helpful adage. In order to be successful in the ISO certification process, it is important to not just “Say what you do…” but to also “…Do (demonstrate) what you say.” The auditing firm could walk up to any random employee, and if they didn’t give an answer to the question that was consistent with what management described as the documented process, then the audit item was considered unmet or deficient. One way or another, it will catch up with you.
5. BC Tools that do not work. I think having an effective BC tool can be helpful to your success with Business Continuity. Manual processes based on Word and Excel docs can work, but usually require more time and resources compared to an effective tool. There are several good BC tools out there. I happen to believe that the OpsPlanner™ solution from Paradigm Solutions International is a great tool which does work well, and integrates all of the program, planning and incident management needs into an easy-to-use tool that is effective for the program managers as well as the casual planner or end user.
6. Taking on too much at one time. One thing I have learned is that successful BC programs are very iterative in their approach. There are many facets to crisis management, BC and DR. Unless the organization has unlimited resources, it is important to start small and gain some early successes under your belt, and facilitate the maturity of the program in an organized fashion over time.
7. Lack of vision / inability to see the big picture. With so many details and moving parts, combined with endless interpretations and conflicting approaches, BC can be viewed as a shadowy and impossible goal. It is imperative to understand what success looks like. What are your critical success factors? The road to business continuity is rarely a straight line. As someone once said in a particular Quentin Tarantino movie: “It’s a forest, and like a forest it’s easy to lose your way…to get lost…to forget where you came in.” To manage a successful BC program, one must articulate the end goal, have a clear set of milestones, and facilitate effective communications to all involved.
In closing, there can be many reasons that a BC program can fail. However, there is one reason that the BC program at your organization can succeed. That reason is YOU. Get the training that is needed, facilitate executive sponsorship and support, be a good advocate for BC to the rest of the staff, resist the check-in-the-box approach, find some BC tools that can help, gain small footholds of success and paint a vision of business continuity that will be enthusiastically viewed and shared by others.