We can always learn from the past, so why should Business Continuity be any different? Celebrate what worked in a situation and learn from the mistakes. Every past incident won’t be the same as every future incident, but the impact of past incidents will repeat itself in the future.
Some stories persist While the WikiLeaks story is over a decade old, the story continues to make the news. A Google search reveals at least half a dozen stories from the past week covering various events and angles. Which brings me to a little story that still teaches a big lesson. At the time, the…
We are a week into 2021, wondering what it will bring. Have you made New Year’s resolutions? What will you do differently in your personal life? And what changes are you going to make in your business and professional life? This is the perfect time to reflect on what went well for your company this…
The Next Great Thing? We’ve all seen them. New companies that appear seemingly out of nowhere. Often they have fancy marketing material, a snazzy logo, a few fast-talking sales people, and an energetic and keen staff working behind the scenes. The company gets attention, makes some sales, and everything ticks along nicely. The board is…
Think back over the year… Let’s take a quick look at the state of affairs in 2020: Record wildfires through much of the Western US Above average tornado activity Two severe derecho events, one in the Midwest (making the list of billion-dollar events for 2020, second only to Hurricane Laura) Currently tied for most active…
Way back on November 9, 2009, we first wrote about the H1N1 flu virus. In the beginning it was just another typical “winter flu”, and quickly became much more than that. Seemingly overnight, we went from flu epidemic to flu pandemic. Cue the panic. The stress. And chaos. No one was prepared. The international health…
You’ve done everything right: You have a plan Your plan is tested and verified You’ve trained your team members Your plan is maintained Disaster strikes! Now what? You know you’re prepared, but still there is some nervousness and uncertainty. You can relax knowing that your business continuity plan is working for you, but it is still essential…
Hopefully you didn’t miss Part 1 of 10 BCP Mistakes You Really Want to Avoid where we laid out the first five mistakes for you. If you did, check the post available here. 6. Not maintaining the plan. Outdated contact information, a list of unaddressed action items and procedures that no longer reflect your business…
Don’t let these BCP mistakes put your recovery at risk: 1. Managing the wrong risks. You may have heard of the term cognitive bias – the irrational errors that we humans make in our decision-making. One type of cognitive bias, the availability heuristic, causes us to heavily weigh our judgments toward more recent information. This…
Big Disasters When you think of disasters what do you think of? Flood, massive power outage, fire, and pandemic are probably at the top of your list. That’s ok, big disasters always grab the headlines. In addition, there are all events that we can’t really control; the hurricanes are going to happen, the power does…
A disaster to one person might be normal to another person, same goes for companies. One company might be completely comfortable with loosing a million dollars while another company won’t make a million dollars this year. Disasters are all shapes and scales! While this can kind of sound abstract, let’s look at one that is…