(Re)introducing Adaptive Business Continuity

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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I have promoted something called Adaptive Business Continuity for more than 10 years. I know it is not everyone’s particular cup of tea and I’m fine with that. I just want to make certain people know there are alternatives to the traditional business continuity and organizational resilience methodology.

In the interest of furthering that goal, I offer an introduction, of sorts, to the world of Adaptive Business Continuity. This should serve as an icebreaker for some and a course correction for others. You do not have to agree. Just be aware Adaptive exists and it is a drastic departure from the typical approach to business continuity with which all of us in this discipline are familiar.

Many articles have been written by my fellow conspirator, Dr. David Lindstedt, and I over the years. An argument can be made there is enough content already available to further exploration of adaptive concepts and principles is unnecessary. That may be true, but my thinking and approach to articulating Adaptive has changed considerably since its inception. So, I am revisiting this territory and sharing it from a new perspective over the course of six articles, starting with this one.

Elsewhere in this series I will dive into specific aspects of Adaptive. I will explore the meaning behind the language used, what makes it distinct from the traditional view of preparedness and, perhaps most importantly, what it offers the practitioner. To begin, I want to tackle a few misconceptions of which I’ve become aware. I’ve chosen four, specifically. I came across these after asking for summaries of Adaptive Business Continuity from ChatGPT and Claude Sonnet 3.5. I have heard similar perspectives as these voiced over the years, which re-enforces my belief these are quite common beliefs and not mere AI hallucinations.

Adaptive aims to simplify BC practices and reduce documentation

I have frequently heard Adaptive described as a shortcut. This implies Adaptive is little more than an abbreviated version of the well-known BC lifecycle. Adaptive is actually a re-imagining of how preparedness work can be done.

I describe the resulting methodology simply: 1) Measure capability, 2) Improve capability, then back to 1) Measure capability.

From a process perspective, this is inarguably simpler than the traditional methodology.

However, it requires significantly more of the practitioner in terms of skills and competence. How capabilities are measured can vary. Improvement can take many different forms, which each require drastically different actions. Navigating this complex landscape requires judgement and expertise that can only be achieved through practice and a willingness to get out of one’s comfort zone.

Adaptive BC is designed to provide a framework that delivers better outcomes when organizations deal with losses. The result may be a reduction in documentation (something I greatly favor) but that is not a stated goal.

Prioritizing services or processes is a component of Adaptive

Many Adaptive proponents do speak of the need to prioritize services for the purpose of defining program scope or sequencing recovery efforts. I do not. You will also not find this mentioned anywhere within the Adaptive BC Manifesto, the Adaptive book, or any of our previous articles.

My experience over the years has led me to conclude that trying to define priorities for the resumption of services is wasted effort. Many activities can take place in parallel, and priorities will change when disasters occur. A perfect example is the governmental lockdowns and health authority mandates that followed the emergence of COVID. The result is that demand for products and services changed drastically, upending previous priorities. Priorities may be defined following adaptive principles, but it is not at all a stated component of the Adaptive framework.

Adaptive advocates testing and reliance on lessons learned

I was surprised to see the word “testing” within the summary of provided by ChatGPT. This is because one of the adaptive principles is titled, “Exercise for Improvement, Not for Testing.”

As this principles states: “Exercises should be used to support the continuous improvement of response and recovery capabilities. They should neither be used as tests of recoverability nor as reviews of planning documentation.”

Exercises are opportunities for teams to practice, to learn and to identify where improvements can be made. You won’t find any use of the term “lessons learned” within the manifesto, and it is seldom referenced as an outcome of exercise activities within Adaptive literature. As with prioritizing services, this may be done following adaptive principles but is not at all necessary to be aligned with Adaptive.

Adaptive emphasizes the improvement of strategies

For a number of reasons, I would like to see the word “plan” used a lot less within our profession. Seeing the word “strategy” in its place would be a step in the right direction.

Strategy improvement is not, however, a key outcome of Adaptive BC efforts. There is some benefit to having clearly defined recovery strategies, but strategies only provide benefit to competent and empowered teams armed with the resources they need to carry out the mission. For this reason, I always emphasize the importance of focusing efforts on capabilities and consider plans and strategies as little more than supporting tools for any business continuity program. The improvement of strategies and/or plans is simply not an expected outcome of Adaptive BC work.

There are more certainly misunderstandings, but these four cover the most common – and most significant – misinterpretations of Adaptive Business Continuity. There is much more to say so keep your eyes open the next six business days for the other articles in this series. In other pieces, I will explore specific aspects of Adaptive along with my recommendations for ensuring the greatest likelihood of success. In the meantime, stay curious, friends!

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.