EDITOR’S NOTE: This six-part series explores Adaptive Business Continuity, a framework that deliberately challenges traditional business continuity assumptions and restructures how preparedness and resilience are achieved.
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“Adaptive Business Continuity is an approach for continuously improving an organization’s continuity capabilities.”
– Adaptive Business Continuity Manifesto
Improving response and recovery capabilities is the heart of Adaptive Business Continuity. It starts with the premise capability always exists. With that understanding, we can break capability into its component parts for the purpose of measurement. There are lots of contributors to capability and many ways they can be broken down and assessed.
If you’ve read the previous entries in this series, then perhaps you can guess what comes next: improvement. Within measurement is the secret to improvement. There are many things we can measure: resources, competencies, empowerment, strategies, capacity and diversity, just to name but a few. Each one of these is an opportunity to improve. This means a wide variety of steps can be taken by just about anyone and at any level within the organization. Let’s explore.
Improvement as part of measurement
Believe it or not, improvement can be realized simply by asking the right questions. When you inquire of someone whether all the resources they may need are readily available, the immediate response might be “no” or “resources are limited.” However, this may prompt the responder to think more deeply following their response. They may choose at a later time to confirm if resources actually exist. They may even take the step of obtaining the resources they need. The next time the question is asked, improvement may have taken place in the interim.
The same is true for competencies, empowerment, or other contributors to capability. There may be limited awareness, initially. However, within the questions themselves, are the answers to what contributes to more effective response and recovery. This means users sometimes take it upon themselves to obtain things they now understand as important to readiness. This is one of the ways in which Adaptive Business Continuity is able to deliver value so quickly.
Depending on how you measure, there may be opportunities to build consensus and clarity across multiple users or respondents. For example, one member of a team may believe everything needed is readily available. Another member of that same team may have the opposite belief. This is an opportunity to investigate and improve! Perhaps resources do exist and now the participant who was not aware can be properly informed. Conversely, someone might have a mistaken impression all necessary resources are available to them. Setting the record straight may not be an improvement. However, by exposing the truth, there is greater likelihood future improvements will result.
Level One Improvement
Sitting back and letting the process drive improvement sounds great, but it isn’t going to move the needle significantly over time. For that, practitioners need to step in. Fortunately, as with all things Adaptive, options are plentiful.
Yes, people and teams may take independent action to improve, but sometimes they need a nudge. For practitioners, this represents the low hanging fruit within the improvement realm. Do not underestimate the progress that can be made with relatively little effort. Often, all this requires is a simple follow-up discussion. Such meetings can be great forums to review results, propose improvement actions, or help individuals connect the dots. Sometimes all that’s needed is encouragement. These are small steps but it can lead to outsized results. When people better understand the components of capability and feel supported, they become agents in their own improvement.
Level Two Improvement
Sometimes greater degrees of involvement become necessary. Maybe the team isn’t understanding. Maybe solutions are elusive. Perhaps options exist but they are beyond the means of the team members to act on. This is where we, as preparedness professionals, step in.
This can take a variety of forms. Perhaps more in-depth discussions with the participating teams are necessary. Maybe it is necessary to engage peers in human resources, finance, procurement, or security to provide expertise or even to take action on behalf of participants. It could be the resilience or business continuity function has something that can be offered: facilitating training or an exercise, for example. It might involve provisioning team members within a corporate notification or collaboration tool. Maybe other operational team members can be engaged to share their own improvement journey or to brainstorm with counterparts who are struggling. Perhaps you have budget dollars available to support improvement across several individuals or teams. That may sound unlikely, but it can happen!
Our role in this space should not be to own improvement actions (though we may have to). We should aim to lead people to where they need to go or leverage our internal network to the benefit of the teams we support. I have witnessed the power of merely bringing people together, posing a particular problem and then letting the discussions play out. Our power rests not just in our competence within this space but the relationships we build and our ability to facilitate and foster collaboration. Do not underestimate it.
Level Three Improvement
As with anything in business, when all else fails – escalate to leadership. The time will come when all available options have been exhausted or when the improvements necessary will exceed the resources of the teams, the resilience function or support services to perform. How you proceed can vary, as it should.
One approach is to go to leadership with a hand extended. If you do this, be clear about the initiative you propose, the anticipated benefits, and the cost or action requested. This makes it simple but comes with a risk: that you’ll get a flat-out no.
Conversely, one can provide a variety of levers to pull: 1) invest in the procurement of resources; 2) prioritize time for learning or exercising; or 3) clearly define and communicate authority. The value here is that each has a different ask in terms of dollars, action or prioritization. The result of any single decision can be presented in terms of the benefit it provides.
Given the range of options, your chances of coming away with at least one approval are increased but not guaranteed. Even a full rejection of all options should never be considered a bad thing. If you’re provided an audience with leadership keep your eyes and ears open. Regardless of the outcome, you can develop a better understanding of what can be done do to improve your chances the next time around.
Summary
I have done my best, in the spirit of Adaptive, to avoid being prescriptive. There have been many calls for more concrete solutions professionals may execute in this space. Having tread into that territory, let me now end with a caveat: this is what has worked for me. In other words, individual results may vary. I encourage you to be open to exploration and experimentation. Anticipate setbacks and be prepared to try new solutions when they occur. It only makes you a better practitioner.
Stay curious, friends!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Armour
Mark Armour is a resilience industry leader with more than 20 years of experience in the field. He has been instrumental in the implementation and leadership of several global business continuity and crisis management programs. More importantly, Armour has been directly involved in corporate response and recovery for hundreds of events, from IT outages and natural disasters to pandemics. Armour is the co-author, along with David Lindstedt, Ph.D., of the “Adaptive Business Continuity Manifesto” and the book, “Adaptive Business Continuity: A New Approach.” He is currently the senior director of global resilience at Brink’s Inc., the worldwide leader in secure logistics and cash management solutions.
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