4 ways to make a project a success despite reluctant users

Insurance Networking News has a fantastic article on one of the most common barriers to any project:

Making a project succeed despite reluctant users

Regardless what business you're in, you will have people who don't share your vision. This article is geared specifically toward software/system users who are less than supportive or completely against change, but the ideas in the article can be applied to a wide range of situations.

The CEO's knowledge of business continuity

Check out this great article from Continuity Central:

CEO? Here are three key business continuity questions you need to ask

So often, the CEO believes they have an understanding of business continuity that is greater than their true understanding. 

Business continuity professionals need to regularly communicate with the CEO to assure they understand the risk level the company was willing to take (as identified in the last Risk Analysis), what business functions were identified as critical to the survival of the company (and what business functions weren't deemed critical), and the resources required to either maintain critical functions without interruption, or recover critical functions in the in the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) as documented in the last Business Impact Analysis - including systems, data, sites, personnel, hardware including workstations

A CEO that understood these things 2 years ago when a Risk Analysis and Business Impact Analysis were completed may not recall everything, if they aren't involved in Business Continuity on a very regular basis (such as weekly, not yearly).

Can your CEO explain what is recoverable and in what time frame? Can they explain how many people would be working from home (if able) or waiting for facilities to secure a new site that can accommodate all employees and functions? 

Check out Continuity Central's article, and I'd love to know what you think.

And keep in mind that Business Continuity Awareness week is coming up in March and could be a great time to work on awareness with your CEO and upper management.

A common theme you may notice in my blogs is that I campaign hard against the idea that disaster recovery is dead (long live business resilience). Unless your RTOs for every function are zero downtime, and you have a perfect mirroring of all systems (which doesn't mean you're immune to disaster), you have work-space recovery for 100% of employees, disaster recovery is still relevant. Even if you have all of those things, you still have to deal with Crisis Communication, Emergency Response and Emergency Management, and Disaster Recovery. 

There is no getting around it. Business Continuity and Business Resilience plans enhance the Disaster Recovery plan, not replace. You can't disaster-proof your business. If you could, well, a lot of us would be out of a job!

Check out my Toolbox page for some resources you may want to incorporate for Business Continuity Awareness week.

More Dynamic Tabletop Exercises for Emergency Response and Crisis Management

One of the challenges of tabletop exercises is that they don't become a predictable reading of the plan. Tabletop exercises are very cost effective, but they aren't known for being creative or exciting  (in general).

One of the benefits of tabletop exercises is that they're very cost effective. And they are a great tool to use with upper management since travel can be minimized. But in order to keep upper management in your organization interested in tabletop exercises, you've got to lead dynamic tabletop exercises that stay fresh and non-repetitive.

FEMA has developed tabletop scripts for organizations to use for three scenarios: a critical power failure to multiple communities, a chemical accident, and an impending hurricane. The chemical accident and hurricane scenarios both have "video inject scripts" that you can use as the exercise progresses:

Emergency Planning Exercises (FEMA)

If you've never presented a tabletop exercise, or would like some new ideas to incorporate, check out the FEMA site and put this in your toolbox!

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.