One of the defining creeds in crisis management is that the C-suite should know what is being said about the company and what impact that could have on the corporation’s reputation and their licence to operate. We call it Horizon Scanning and we help companies to do a 360-degree review of what is going on around it.
Key to this approach is intelligence gathering followed by intelligence sharing, both up and down the organisation.
What is now evident is that this was not happening within the BBC, whose Director General resigned on Saturday night following failures in crisis management and internal communications.
A systemic failure is what it is being called and may yet have deeper problems for the future of the BBC.
I thought I'd share something with you just to make you smile ... or take pity on me!
I had a meeting with my boss last week, and when I arrived, he was, as usual, on the phone. I tried to sneak in without disturbing him, but unfortunately I was not alone.
I had a pet carrier with me, and Russell and assumed, wrongly, that it was my adorable Border Terrier. At this moment, the passenger in the carrier decided to make herself heard, meaning I had to rush out of the office pronto!.
The project which launched just over 6 months ago is now due an review and update ... PDCA in practice ;)
This piece of work was so rewarding; working with a committee of like minded, and indeed "other-minded" folks to establish the core questions we need responses to from the supply chain, was fascinating.
It's been a busy few weeks at the Continuity Forum!
The new ISO22301 is with us and the Forum is busily putting our Webinars together, busily putting our breakfast briefings together, busily... You get the picture. Busy.
But that leads me to thinking about conversations this week. Everyone is fraught keeping up with the latest information, whether on standards or on other business developments. It's the 21st Century, and I can no longer avoid becoming a member of the Twitteratti, and have signed up not only to Twitter, but also to the idea of researching best Twitter/continuity practice.
In August 2011, Gayle Hedgecock was the guest speaker at BANG!
During an entertaining evening, she posed the question: "Just how many Continuity questionnaires must I fill in each year?"
In her case, it was scores of the things; others were lucky and had fewer to do, but it became clear that ALL the questionnaires were different, even though in reality they were asking the same questions. It was just that the questions were phrased slightly differently, or were in a different order. In some cases, they were asking questions that had little relevance to Continuity...
So, on the 16th August, a group of thirteen respected Continuity professionals got together to try to make life just a tiny bit easier and the 3PQ project was born!
BANG is a group of friendly business continuity professionals who physically get together once a month and share experiences all year round via our LinkedIn group.
Each time we get together, typically the last Wednesday of every month in the City, London, we invite a guest speaker to talk about a hot topic. Speakers include a wide variety of industry thought leaders from multiple business sectors. Whatever the subject, whatever the debate we like to push boundaries, challenge the unchallenged.
There has been some fairly active discussion on a few of the industry forums recently about how standards such as BS25999 and ISO22301 are being seen as potentially even more 'red tape' by many businesses and SME companies in particular.
A key comment made was that many smaller organisations are under tremendous pressure at the moment, with more loaded on them by adding Business Continuity to the mix through the new ISO. It was summed up by the title … "It's unlikely that SME's will welcome the new standard with open arms".
While I have great sympathy with the position taken about the plethora of regulations, legislation and other seemingly nonsense GUMPF* that surrounds us and eats away our time, I confess unsurprisingly though it's very hard to agree this is at all valid when it comes to Business Continuity.
Some of the sharper eyed amongst you will have noticed that pretty recently we have added a new feature to the Business Continuity Forum Website. Its up there in the top right hand corner ... our monthly charity.
The Continuity, Emergency and Security aspects of industry have a close involvement and understanding of what can go wrong and how lives can be ruined through a myriad of causes. Many of us have witnessed first hand some of the terrible things that do happen in this world.
In August 2011, Gayle Hedgecock was the guest speaker at BANG! During an entertaining evening, she posed the question: "Just how many Continuity questionnaires must I fill in each year?"
In her case, it was scores of the things; others were lucky and had fewer to do, but it became clear that ALL the questionnaires were different, even though in reality they were asking the same questions. It was just that the questions were phrased slightly differently, or were in a different order. In some cases, they were asking questions that had little relevance to Continuity...
You can replay the MIR3 Webinar that looks at the special considerations and challenges for Business Continuity that need to be addressed within Healthcare organisations.
The Amazon EC2 "failure" has probably caused their customers to take a hard look at their business continuity plans and Amazon working hard to improve their own resilience so that they can recover the confidence of their customers and maintain a dominant market position.
For some time the potential offered by the cloud has been the topic of discussion between BC and IT Security Professionals. Some are positive and see the potential for economies and resilience to be improved, others see the risks of creating a critical and possibly difficult to address dependency. Both are right and the example set by Amazons embarrassing failure is in many ways potentially fortuitous to the industry as a whole as it highlights the basic issue involved. Stuff will fail and you have to plan thoroughly for it!
Submitted by Webmaster01 on Fri, 04/15/2011 - 11:09
Thought I would share a short note received today from Tim Armit of Clifton Risk Consulting, an experienced Business Continuity man, where he notes/compares the sporting activities over the next few days that bear a marked similarity to 'other' events that the capital will be coping with.
Working in the business continuity field can be challenging, even frustrating, but sometimes there are moments of clarity, a time when you realise why the challenges and frustrations are worth the stress.
Over the past few months we have been working towards the launch of VSAT - the vulnerability self-assessment toolkit with NACTSO. It hasn't been too easy. The public sector is under tremendous financial pressure and money is more than just a little tight. For 18 months, the Continuity Forum and NACTSO have been working against time and budget constraints to develop a shared vision, something that can make a real difference to the safety and resilience of all our communities.
Protecting our social and commercial centres is a vital task for the police and security services, but one that cannot be truly effective without wider participation from the community. This is where VSAT fits in.
BANG is a group of friendly business continuity professionals who physically get together once a month and share experiences all year round via our 
There has been some fairly active discussion 
For some time the potential offered by the cloud has been the topic of discussion between BC and IT Security Professionals. Some are positive and see the potential for economies and resilience to be improved, others see the risks of creating a critical and possibly difficult to address dependency. Both are right and the example set by Amazons embarrassing failure is in many ways potentially fortuitous to the industry as a whole as it highlights the basic issue involved. Stuff will fail and you have to plan thoroughly for it!
