| Published originally in - Business Continuity Planning - on line Now part of their permanent collection "BPC Handbook" BCP 104: "The One-Percent Solution" Your new business continuity planning team is running a risk all its own. It's the "list all possible disasters" syndrome. Here you are with an eager, well-meaning group about to start the planning process. Your executive sponsor is waiting for your early insights into your organization's risks and your mitigation plans. Your adrenaline yells, "Do it right! Create a list of every possible disaster!" And since your team is hot on the scent, you've also committed to identifying all possible impacts those disasters might have across the board for the company. You've read the books. You know a complete risk assessment and business impact analysis is essential to creating a professional business continuity plan—what might, could or may happen to any or all parts of the corporation. Many professional associations and expert consultants recommend this approach. However, if this is your company's first go at putting together a business continuity plan, wade into this swamp with care. Your team may be about to get in over its head. Faced with pages and pages of possible risks, reams of documents on key business processes from departmental teams all over the company, your team grows tense. Worried about the scale of this monster they've spawned, the search for a magic bullet is initiated. If there is a simple prioritizing scheme, they think, maybe we’ll get out of the muck. After a few false starts (Lost revenue? Human impact? Bad publicity?), your team decides to seek help from the executive sponsor. Now you have to show up with a huge list that may trivialize your work and possibly reduce his or her support. At best, the senior executive scans the huge list and points out a favorite. "Do this one," he or she says confidently. It's done. You, of course, now feel even more uncomfortable. What about the rest of these? Aren't they important? Could he or she be wrong?
What to Do? Dump the list and start over. OK, perhaps that's a bit extreme. But you do need a shortcut to quickly get back on track to reach your real goal. You do know what your real, short-term goal is, don't you? It's getting real protection in place for your company's most serious business risks and getting your team an early win. Not creating something perfect. Not being all things to all people. At least not yet. Many a prestigious consultant and several "Best Practices in Business Continuity" articles recommend the "listing all possible disasters" trap. It's fine when your team has lots of experience, resources, time, and management support. You, with your limited budget, semi-enthusiastic executive sponsor, and inexperienced team, need a short cut. And you need it to be a hard-hitting, short list that your sponsor and his or her peers will be willing to act upon with time and money. And you need to demonstrate a sense of urgency. If there are serious risks to important company operations or initiatives, solutions are needed now. You need to jump-start your business continuity plan. Now. In an environment new to business continuity planning, early results are very powerful. For one, they provide "proof of concept." They will encourage continued investment by management. They validate you as its leader, too. Not a bad thing. Now what you need is speed. Quick, concise targeting, fast prioritization, and rapid action plans. Once in place, you can refine and broaden the scope. This is, after all, an ongoing process. So where to start?
The One-Percent Solution All disasters are not all created equal. Your job is to ignore the possible 99 percent and focus on the probable one percent of business-killers. One of the most effective ways to do that is to start at the top. Get on the calendar of the senior executives of relevant business unit(s). Get their lists. Do this with a series of scripted interviews. These will yield an invaluable guide to the company's critical business processes, partners, revenue and other enterprise level issues with which you should be concerned. You want to think like an investigative journalist. You are searching for the one percent that drives ninety nine percent of the company's success. Not the risks, although you'll naturally talk about that, but what's important to the company. What are the processes, profit centers, performance drivers, cash flow, assets or key initiatives that are essential to survival? The one percent. Once you have a vision in place of what's really business critical, you can look for risks for those items. You don't have to go back and convince upper management that you have the right list. After all, they gave you the list. So how to ask the right questions? Your company may be different from others but for starters, here are some scripts to consider.
Keep It Simple Simply asking, "What's important?" is an amazingly effective strategy. You may say it using bigger words or in a more business-like way like, "What are the key programs from your perspective?" or "Which initiatives, if delayed, would permanently hurt the company cash flow, reputation or margin?" But remember, senior staff generally are goal-oriented, so say what you want right up front. Keep it simple! Execs spend lots of their time on this new-initiative stuff: New products, markets, partnerships or perhaps a new round of funding. They get graded on them. These may be very confidential. However, they may share the information in order to protect the initiative. They will want them in the plan, so probe on what's coming down the pipeline. Ask what's relevant in the pipeline. Whether with suppliers, customer or partners, relationships can be very important. Many companies assign executives to maintaining specific important relationships, as with an executive sponsor. The executive is a phone call away if that customer has a problem. The executive you are interviewing may well 'own' some of these customers. Ask if they should be on your one percent list. It’s not even a question that consulting firms build serious continuity plans by following their customers' major cash flows. You can too. Start with their worldwide customer base—cash flows through the global banking system into corporate accounts and then out again to creditors. If you meet with the CFO or a key senior finance person, ask about following the money and identifying its vulnerabilities.
Summing the Parts When you've finished with your interviews, you should have a much shorter list than the one your team built. You will only get a couple of focus areas from each executive. Each will have his or her own responsibilities, so each may be biased toward their own interests. However, each executive is also part of a team and will have an invaluable insight into corporate-wide importance. There should be a significant overlap in thinking. That's where your agenda lies. You'll be surprised at how much consistency you’ll see. After you've gotten your input, you'll consolidate it into a working short list, the critical "one percent." If you can, you should add data to the executives' gut recommendations: Revenue per hour on essential operations, percent of business of key customers, dollar value or replacement time on key assets. Quantify their instincts and test them. When you believe you have it, get those same folks back together to review the list as a group. You’re going to do this to confirm you’re right, to deal with conflicting demands, and to gain support. If you're not comfortable driving this process, let your sponsor do it. But give the executives the opportunity to argue with each other so conflicts get resolved. The need is for the top folks to be engaged. If you didn't quite hear them right, they'll tell you. And since you've asked them directly, you will also, by default, be getting their agreement to support you on these issues that are moving forward.
Getting On with It Now you know the one percent that's important to the company. You will use this to look for risks, to build plans, and to test assumptions. It will provide you with a conceptual beacon to chart your direction, to make decisions, and to reassure yourself as you move forward. The one percent will help you to identify threats since you have a vision of what's important. From here on out, you want to be really thorough and cast your net wide. Even though the range of exposures of the one percent is fairly limited, threats arrive in new and different forms everyday. Extortion, kidnapping, and intellectual property loss are examples that may impact them. But now you know your focus. You can be sure you’re on the right scent. You've got the crucial one percent on your side. |