January 29, 2015 CDC press briefing on measles, and the anti-vaccination movement as a public health threat

This is a transcript of Thursday's Center for Disease Control (CDC) tele-briefing for the press on the state of measles in the United States in 2015: 

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/t0129-measles.html

A few key take-aways from the briefing:

In January (as of January 28), 84 people in 14 states have been reported as having measles.In 2014, there were over 600 cases.

Measles was declared "eliminated" in the United States in 2000. Between 2001 and 2010, the CDC saw a median of 60 cases a year in the US. This was due to the highly effective measles vaccine.

Measles is very contagious, something that may have faded from our collective memory after a decade that saw so few cases. From  http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/transmission.html :

"Measles is a highly contagious virus that lives in the nose and throat mucus of an infected person. It can spread to others through coughing and sneezing. Also, measles virus can live for up to two hours on a surface or in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed. If other people breathe the contaminated air or touch the infected surface, then touch their eyes, noses, or mouths, they can become infected. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.

"Infected people can spread measles to others from four days before to four days after the rash appears.

"Measles is a disease of humans; measles virus is not spread by any other animal species."

Some people don't realize that the complications of measles are quite serious, as shown in this Alberta Health Services slide:

This UNICEF infographic details the effectiveness of this vaccine and others:

So why are we seeing a resurgence in measles in the United States? Because of a small movement to forgo vaccines by people under a false belief that they're unsafe, despite the overwhelming agreement in the scientific community that parents should vaccinate their children except in a few rare circumstances. 

Unfortunately, the decision not to vaccinate effects more than the unvaccinated child. Unvaccinated children pose a risk to expectant mothers, children not yet old enough to be vaccinated, and even people who have been vaccinated: the vaccination is about 93% effective in preventing someone exposed to the measles from getting it. 

The backlash against the anti-vaxxer movement has been fierce:

Measles is a serious topic, one that no one can cover in one blog, and I don't have any medical qualifications to give advice. But I hope if you're unsure what to believe about the measles vaccine, you'll do your own research and make up your own mind. I hope you'll come to the conclusion that I have: the measles vaccine prevents deaths and can effectively eliminate measles.

Afterthought: I wanted to clarify why I chose this subject for a Business Continuity blog. If children are diagnosed with the measles, or their parents are afraid to take them out for fear of exposure, then it effects the workforce: more parents will miss work. If we witness a growing number of people diagnosed with the measles, it will effect a growing number of employees and possibly lead to staffing issues.

Any public health threat can effect an organization negatively, and business continuity professional have to take that into consideration when considering staffing. 

The Old Elevator Speech

Many professionals are familiar with the concept of the elevator speech: a rehearsed, persuasive, short statement that sells you, your company or your products and services, that you can use if you unexpectedly see a contact or potential customer (or employer) and only have a very brief amount of time to talk to them - like the length of time an elevator ride might take.

MindTools.com has developed guidelines for crafting an elevator speech, if you've never created one before:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/elevator-pitch.htm

The elevator speech is a fantastic tool, one you should definitely utilize. But . . . how long has it been since you revisited your elevator speech and updated it? 

Is it covered in dust? 

Why not take the time this week to make it a priority to revise your elevator speech?

Got your elevator speech updated? 

Ready to take it to the next level?

Many business continuity professionals have worked in their current company for years. They know all of the members of upper management, and the members of upper management have at least an average understanding of your company's business continuity program. 

But you may have limited face-time with members of upper management: perhaps you see them in a weekly staff meeting where you're expected to very briefly give an update. Unless you schedule time with them, which can be challenging, you don't have a lot of opportunities to:

• sell yourself: your skills, your initiative, your ideas;
• sell your business continuity program: not just update them on the latest development, but tout the progress that has been made in the program in the last year(s) or remind them of challenges that have been overcome; and
• sell your vision: 
• what area(s) do you feel needs to be a focal point of the business continuity program this year?
• what ideas do you have about changing the status quo?
• what do you need management support to do this year?

The Alec Baldwin movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" utilizes a sales saying: ABC = Always Be Closing. It means everything should ideally be done with one goal in mind: taking you a step closer to making a sale or closing the deal.  

Always Be Closing

Be prepared to use even a brief period of time (like an elevator ride) when you have the captive attention of someone in your organization crucial to your success or the success of one of you initiatives. Here's a sample elevator speech crafted to highlight a problem in the organization, what is already being done about the problem, and an idea that requires the buy-in of executive management:

"Did you know that at the last fire drill, it took 45 minutes to clear the building? I spoke with the fire chief and she said a building this size should be able to evacuate in half that time. One of the lunch-and-learns I've scheduled for Business Continuity Awareness Week in March, is for her to come in and stress exactly how quickly a fire can spread through a training video they use. I'm especially concerned that employees who require assistance aren't being evacuated fast enough.

"I'd like to increase the frequency of our fire drills until we improve the evacuation time, of course working around critical business periods. Combined with my awareness initiatives, I know we can do better on employee safety. Can I book some time with you next Monday to discuss the fire drill scheduling?"

Look at the sentence in red: it ends on a positive note that shows confidence.

Note that last sentence asking for a commitment to meet and discuss scheduling on a specific day. Without that sentence, you haven't asked for the "sale", you haven't necessarily made progress to closing the deal. You could go back to your office and hope he considers what you said . . . or you can Always Be Closing and ask for a commitment before he steps out of that elevator.

If those two paragraphs look long, consider this: with no practice (and a little bit of a slow southern drawl) I read it out loud in 47 seconds.

Experiment with developing several elevator speeches for different situations to accomplish different goals. Practice them so you are always ready. 

As business continuity professionals, it's what we do: always be ready! 

Never get caught not knowing what to say again.

Friday Funny: all those forms

Ready.gov - Testing & Exercises

Ready.gov Testing and Exercises

Ready.gov has put together a list of the benefits of testing. They also did a fantastic job of discussing the use of the term 'exercising' vs. 'testing':

Testing the Plan

When you hear the word “testing,” you probably think about a pass/fail evaluation. You may find that there are parts of your preparedness program that will not work in practice. Consider a recovery strategy that requires relocating to another facility and configuring equipment at that facility. Can equipment at the alternate facility be configured in time to meet the planned recovery time objective? Can alarm systems be heard and understood throughout the building to warn all employees to take protective action? Can members of emergency response or business continuity teams be alerted to respond in the middle of the night? Testing is necessary to determine whether or not the various parts of the preparedness program will work.

Exercises

When you think about exercises, physical fitness to improve strength, flexibility and overall health comes to mind. Exercising the preparedness program helps to improve the overall strength of the preparedness program and the ability of team members to perform their roles and to carry out their responsibilities. There are several different types of exercises that can help you to evaluate your program and its capability to protect your employees, facilities, business operations, and the environment

I know some people have become adverse to the word 'testing', feeling that if the test isn't 100% successful, it reflects poorly, like a failure. Personally, I use the words interchangeably. I think one key to a successful exercise program is setting the expectation with management that it is designed to find the areas that need improvement, and there will always be areas that need improvement.

In my opinion, if an organization is testing year after year and they're finding no weaknesses in the continuity plan, then they need to look at changing the testing scenario. Recovering the IT environment isn't proof of business continuity, it's one component. Some  organizations may over-focus on IT recovery/resilience, at the expense of other plan components such as:

• Command and control procedures
• Communications with employees, shareholders and the media (employees may have been told not to speak to the media if an event occurs, but have you updated that direction to include not posting to any social media or taking unauthorized pictures during a recovery?)
• Alternate facility for employees to work in, both locally and farther away in the case of a large incident
• Staffing, cross-training and the need for alternate staff
• Managing customer communications and expectations

Testing is such an important component to the business continuity program. Once it's become an integrated part of the program, it's important to continuously reevaluate the scope and scenario of your exercises.

DRJ's SpringWorld 2015

DRJ's SpringWorld opens in 51 days! Mark your calendar: March 22 - 25, 2015.

http://www.drj.com/events/spring-world-2015/homepage.html

Wednesday Wisdom: Your Backup Plan

Notification Wallet Card Template and Awareness Training

Business Continuity Contact Card (Wallet Card) Template

This PowerPoint presentation was shared on www.slideshare.net: Best Practices in Business Planning for Pandemic Influenza, by Jim Goble, CBCP, at National City Corporation. It's from 2006 but a lot of it is still relevant, including the Wallet Card template on slide 12. 

If you've never created a Wallet Card for your organization, they're very useful. Team members may have a lot of that information on their phones, but it could be outdated. By developing and distributing a Wallet Card, they can refer to it and updates contact information in their phones. This is Crisis Communication, something a team would access during the Notification Phase of an event as well as the Assessment Phase.

Make sure you date your Wallet Cards, so employees can easily tell if they're looking at the most recent version. I recommend updating the card quarterly, or more often if important information changes.

If your organization isn't used to the idea of a Wallet Card, this can be something you introduce during Business Continuity Awareness Week, March 16 - 20, 2015.

http://bcaw.groupsite.com/main/summary

BCAW also has a lot of information you may want to add to your toolbox. You can also sign up for the group so that you'll get reminders about Business Continuity Awareness Week. 

If you know that Business Continuity Awareness is an area your organization needs to work on, make this the year that you introduce Business Continuity Awareness Week!

DRI's March 2015 Conferece

Just 33 days until DRI's spring conference in San Antonio! It doesn't look like my schedule will allow me to attend, but the conference looks exciting.

http://driconference.org/

Mark your calendar: March 1 - 4, 2015.

Risk isn't the enemy, failure to plan is the enemy

Friday Funny

I've seen my share of plans like this!

Wednesday Wisdom: Fear

Uncle Sam wants you!

Monday Motivation: Planning for your future

Mark your calendar!

Business Continuity Awareness Week 

is March 16 - 20, 2015!


Start planning now!

Wednesday Wisdom: It Can't Be Said Enough

This phrase is one that is used often, but I think it's used so often because we forget. You may produce something great, but if it doesn't match the expectations you set, then it will be seen as a disappointment.

Motivational Monday: Just Watch!

Time for a plan update (and maybe a strategy update too)

Friday Funny: littering

Even if you really wanted to throw someone into a fish pond this weekend, it's the weekend, and I hope you have a great one!

The "Ransom Note" Plan

“Ransom note”, “ransom note format” or “ransom note formatting”: when a document is sent out to a team for each member to insert their content, usually in wildly different formats, and looks similar to a ransom note made up of letters cut out of different magazines.

Sample usage: “If I had a dollar for every ransom note recovery plan I had to spend all night fixing, I’d be retired.”

Copy/Paste is no substitute for careful planning!

Wednesday Wisdom: Listen then speak

It's true that no one wants to hear what you have to say if they feel like you aren't listening to them.

And I'm reminded of the old saying that you have two ears and one mouth because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk!

I think with everyone always checking their phone, too many times people fail to give a speaker their full attention. And we all know how it feels to be "half" listened to: it feels like the other person isn't listening at all! So try to give your full attention when someone is talking to you. It's something I'm definitely going to improve on.

What's yours?

Chaos is not a recovery strategy!

Motivational Monday: Words are no substitute for action!

Make this year count! Every day!