What is Resilience? – This is a great article written by McKinsey and worth a read (5 mins).
Reflecting on some of the points raised by this article Inverroy suggests three top tips for those working on business continuity projects.
1. Capitalise on COVID-19 ‘lived experience’ on enhance a positive risk culture and capture lessons learned.
In the McKinsey study, they found that COVID-19 had a positive impact on corporate resilience for many companies. Inverroy has also seen this first-hand with many of our clients. The concept of ‘risk and resilience’ has moved from a HSE Dept’s focus to having climbed the ladder of importance across the length and breadth of many organisations.
Due to the ‘lived experience’ of COVID-19 from across the workforce this has contributed to the overall awareness and understanding of the importance of risk management. When helping clients develop their business continuity plans post-COVID, anecdotally, staff seem to have a better overall baseline knowledge of risk and are motivated to contribute and learn the importance of business continuity.
Inverroy’s top tip: Capitalise on this lived experience. This will go a long way to enhancing positive risk cultures further. Capturing lessons learned through COVID before they are forgotten will also help to create better plans for the future.
2. A well-constructed business continuity plan and dynamic decision-making go hand in hand.
The article mentions the need for strong leadership in a crisis and the importance of dynamic decision-making, ‘leading with awareness and intentional choice’. Inverroy has witnessed this style of leadership to be very effective in crisis situations. Business continuity plans are an effective and essential tool for supporting this style of leadership. The key is making sure the plans are concise with strong direction.
Inverroy’s top tip: Design the plan with capabilities needed to continue to deliver products and services at pre-defined acceptable levels. Displaying the data so that leaders can use this information how they see fit, provides best support in a crisis and can really add value. Inverroy has a digital platform that supports this concept. For more information on ID click here.
3. IT resilience should be considered alongside each business-critical activity and process in the business continuity plan.
As the article states, in business, technology systems are critical to business recovery, but the recovery plans are often dealt with separately to business resilience plans. Inverroy encourages clients to look at IT systems alongside business-critical activities and processes during the business impact analysis stage. The disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan should complement each other.
Inverroy’s top tip: Bringing the IT team into the business continuity project can pay dividends for designing the right solutions so that technology recovery strategies can be developed to meet the needs of the business recovery.
To find out more, please contact Inverroy at enquiries@inverroy.com
Featured photo credit: Xin (Unsplash)
