Business continuity, crisis management, disaster recovery, risk management, be warned.
AI has the ability to make your job obsolete, or diminish the scope and breath of programs of the past and how they are managed and implemented.
I have written articles in the past on the coming of AI in the business continuity/risk management space. Anyone with the “right questions” can build a BC, DR or CM in ChatGPT.
BC managers can ask questions like, “Build me a business continuity plan that incorporates disaster recovery and crisis management plans for a financial service company, specifically an insurance company that is operationally distributed in (insert countries), has XXX employees in each country, has their critical technology located in these states/countries, include country political risks and geographical risk for each of the countries where operational and technology exists. Also include interdepartmental risk that could impact critical financial and operational risk.”
This is a start of the interrogation that could guide further conversations with ChatGPT.
Of course, ChatGPT will give you the plans, but will also ask questions you may not have thought of, bringing further enlightenment to your programs, such as, “What is the scope of testing you desire? Would you like to include testing scenarios for each plan? Would you like to include first responder interactions?”
This can go on and on to the point where even a “lay person” can implement a program when posing the right questions. But there is a bright side to all of this for program managers. ChatGPT cannot go into your specific business model of actually knowing the employee’s role in each of the scenarios, how well they handle stress, who is the real “go to” person in each department. (Sorry, chain of command doesn’t always reflect the know how to recovery in a disaster situation). It can’t conduct call tree exercises, it can’t measure each aspect of a recovery exercise and make an assessment of the complexity of time measurements, in-flight data loss, can cross offices support each other, and a litany of other recovery aspects.
As we all know, plans are just documents, which for many sits on the shelf until an event occurs. To add real value to your company there are a couple of things you can do to stand above ChatGPT.
- Understand the business operations top to bottom (critical vs. non-critical)
- Know your “go to” people in each department. Again, the real “doers”
- Hone your succession planning to the point where you meet with each backup person and verify they in fact can perform as a backup to the primary
- One of the most important aspects, know all the connections between business operations and supporting technology
This last one is the key to understand end-to-end operations when it comes to operational resilience and how the business operates from customer through technology. From a security and confidentially perspective, do not use ChatGPT for specific details of your company, yourself, or any other criteria which could lead to exposing proprietary information.
Once you know the details the big picture becomes clearer. That is a valuable aspect a BC/DR/CM manager can provide to a company ChatGPT cannot. These things will make you a critical value-added manager. ChatGPT is a tool in the toolbox for business continuity, risk managers, and auditors to leverage in building, testing, and reporting on effective recovery programs. Every program is as good as the knowledge base of the implementer. ChatGPT starts to level the playing field and increases effectiveness by guiding folks who may be new to the industry or, seasoned pros who may not have thought of everything “risk.” Use it, question it, validate it. When you think you are done, dig deeper. Your company and career will benefit from it.
