An Argument for Relationship-Building to Build Business Continuity Programs
People have a hard time imagining what could happen when it has not yet happened.
Imagining and working on a plan to recover from a possible disruption that has not happened before is not typically part of an accountant’s job – accountants work with hard concrete numbers and specific accounting principles.
Imagining is not part of a line manager’s job – they work with defined processes, detailed specifications and work procedures, and deadlines – no time to plan for some hypothetical risk that may or may not happen!
A vice president or director focuses their attention to key performance indicators (KPIs) and return on investment (ROI). They are not easily convinced to approve business continuity initiatives when an emergency has not even happened (and by the way, never has happened.)
Yet, these are the very people we, as business continuity professionals, must partner with to develop resilient business continuity management programs and comprehensive preparedness and recovery capabilities to ensure theirs, and other critical operations, are recovered and returned to normal following any business disruption.
Part of our job is to convince these people they must make time for these kinds of discussions and decisions to commit to this practice – that kind of time and work for them falls under their job description as “other duties as assigned.” How do we convince their leadership and them to commit to other duties that they probably believe “have nothing to do with their job?”
Some of our industry standards tell us our first steps to building a business continuity management practice is to perform due diligence with research into the needs and approval for business continuity, defining and structuring the required program components, securing key contacts with subject matter expertise to “plan, do, check, act” and present the case for business continuity management to executive leadership while reminding them of their role and accountability to a solid business continuity management process for their organization.
Connect on Another Level
But I submit to you that there is a difference between educating them on the importance of business continuity and getting them committed, bought in, and making them believers in business continuity management and planning. Further, understanding this difference and knowing how to bridge the gap between them will make the difference in your business continuity management programs’ preparedness, recoverability, and overall resilience. Bridging this gap will take relationship building!
Shelley Zalis wrote on Forbes.com in her article about “Forget Networking: Relationship Building Is the Best Career Shortcut” the following statements that drive home the point I am making here about relationship building:
Forget networking and embrace relationships. There is power in relationships that extend beyond a generic introduction.
Networking is one and done. It is where you shake someone’s hand and give him or her a business card. Where does that leave you? With a stack of business cards on your desk. A relationship, on the other hand, touches your heart and creates an everlasting partnership.
Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” An executive may meet dozens of people during the day, but if you can make yourself memorable by finding a way to connect on a personal level, you will not be forgotten.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume you now have a relationship with and the buy-in of the executive leadership on establishing a business continuity program. Now you must get laser-focused on how to work with them, their direct reports, and their team members.
You might be thinking, “If we have the leaderships buy-in, then we’re good.” Hold on Nelly! We have a ways to go before securing a solid and resilient organization. Now, the work begins!
The Extra Work Is Worth It … Right?
With the buy-in from the executive leadership, you now have the authority to proceed with your work of building a business continuity management program. If you have done the work right, you also have been given some key contacts with subject matter expertise from leadership to begin working with along with commitment of these contacts’ time and resources to your effort. Good job but hold on just another minute.
We, as business continuity professionals, know exactly why this work is important. We know what must be done to create a successful program and capability for recovery. We even know how to get the work done. But I suggest to you that these concepts are just the surface of our work.
The challenge is at a deeper level. What is it that the various key contacts and subject matter experts need to know about business continuity to convince them this extra work is worth it?
How do we, as business continuity professionals, help these subject matter experts understand and want to do this work?
How do we help them be successful at this effort, see the benefit, while still respecting their job for which they were hired?
Silver Bullet? Meh … Not So Much
I am going to state the obvious here for business continuity professionals.
The first step toward creating a successful business continuity program is to maintain these new relationships and constant buy-in with the executive leadership and their direct reports managing critical business processes and functions. Get to know these leaders, what information and business goals are important to them and their jobs, and always strategize to present how business continuity directly supports them.
To help yourself move forward, offer to prepare a draft communication for the leadership to sign off on that is distributed to their team and engages their direct reports and team members on the importance of business continuity for their operations. This communication is what will clear the path for you and for their team members to move ahead with business continuity planning. This communication gives you a great deal of credibility too. Taking actions like these will most likely ensure these leaders know who you are, appreciate your interest and understanding of their operations, and maybe eventually they will come to rely on you!
Beyond Buy-In
We as business continuity professionals know if there is no buy-in, then you may as well stop right now. If you try to keep going without these leaders’ buy-in, your business continuity program will be downgraded to an “initiative” that will eventually die a slow death. No one on these leaders’ teams will give you the time of day, whether they wanted to or not, if their leadership does not see value in business continuity or you. These leaders will not release their employees to do this extra business continuity work. This is why establishing that relationship with the leadership and securing communication about the leaders’ commitment to business continuity for their operation and sending it down to their direct reports and team was so important!
Fast-forward … now what? You have leadership buy-in, and you are working on and building that relationship. What else do you need to know to get a business continuity program started?
I am not going to share with you a silver bullet process to success. What I want to share with you is another aspect of developing a successful business continuity program – the collaborative and value-added aspects and considerations of our work that, if applied effectively, will make our success greater than our expectations.
We must keep in mind the business continuity work we are asking them to do will be “other duties as assigned.” The assigned key contacts will not want to commit full-time to this work, and they will not want to do this work without their leadership’s go-ahead. After getting their leadership onboard, it’s our job to do the same with them – to establish a relationship, a good report with them. Our job will be to respect what they do, respect their time, and constantly present business continuity from the perspective of their job and the benefits business continuity will bring. Let’s get into this a bit.
Establishing a Respectful Collaborative Relationship
Working with other employees on business continuity planning carries with it a balancing act of time commitment and resource management. These employees have other duties and responsibilities they were actually hired to perform on a daily basis. Moreover, while everyone typically loves to be helpful, if they see “other duties as assigned” creeping into their daily duties, they will push back, delay, procrastinate, and plain old not do the work. You will hear statements like “my plate is full.” Further, if you push at them too hard, they will shut you out. Do not let it get to this point – it is hard to recover from this.
Back in college, and then after working on my first job out of grad school, I learned the hard way with many misunderstood presentations and communications to understand my audience. Before I could do my job, communicate a message, write an email, present a report or PowerPoint slide deck, I had to first understand with whom I was talking.
Is my audience at the C level? I need to get to the point, keep it short, and it better be a point they value.
Is my audience middle management? I need to present the specific topic or request and relevant detail to engage their support.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Having that understanding gives me the advantage to present material in a way that interests my audience, keeps them engaged, helps them see the connection between my presentation content or message and their jobs, and gets them to want to collaborate with me, and see more of whatever I’m “selling.”
Business continuity management and program development is essentially the same process. We must constantly ask ourselves, “Who am I working with today?”
Business continuity, while it has industry standards and structure that promote best practices, cannot be presented and applied in a “cookie-cutter” fashion across the board of an organization. We must customize our presentation, our talking points, and our training materials to our audience, their interests, and priorities. We need to get each SME to see how business continuity relates to their job, is critical for their job, and requires their expertise to make business continuity successful for not only them but the organization.
The end product, a solid and viable business continuity plan must be meaningful to them because of the collaboration between the two of you. Any business continuity exercises conducted must have a scenario that, after going through the BIA and getting to know the team and their operations, must be meaningful and real for them, so they do not fight the exercise. Achieving this means you both will be helping each other to genuinely and equally protect their interests and build a stronger organization.
An Example: HR Payroll Business Continuity Team
For example, you now have the go-ahead from the vice president of corporation communications and chief HR officer to work with an HR manager and their payroll team. You must think through the payroll process (use the BIA results here) and then formulate a story about how business continuity will support, protect, and ease the performance of each critical aspect of the payroll operations.
By presenting the business continuity aspects of successful payroll operations — like cross-training payroll analysts in handling withholding issues to ensure there are no single points of failure (i.e., having only one person knowing how to quickly resolve withholding issues) with this problem-solving process. You will provide a way for the payroll business continuity team to minimize their teams’ frustration that will come from frantic phone calls from employees during an emergency or demanding request from their own leadership.
Being thoughtful and respectful of your understanding of the payroll process has bought you credibility. Further, your effort has allowed payroll to produce a recovery process that will remain fluid and effective during an emergency, permanently removes that single point of failure as an existing vulnerability, and presents a united front, continuous improvement, and successful operations to HR leadership.
As the business continuity professional, you are now in a welcomed position to guide and facilitate a way for the HR team to begin that cross-training effort to eliminate a business process vulnerability, document their progress with new business continuity procedures, and test their new business continuity plan documentation to ensure viability. This extra effort on your part now opens the door for you with these key contacts. They will most likely see you as a valuable partner and not an intruder or annoying “ankle-biter” forcing work on them.
Now, you have a business continuity team that is well on its way to contributing to organizational resilience. They have a new process that is customized, meaningful, and has enhanced their ability to deliver payroll operations.
Some People Will End Up Being ‘Hostages’
With more than 24 years in the field of business continuity, I have found that, try as I might, even when I do all the right things there will be some key contacts assigned by their leadership who simply do not buy-in even if their leadership does. They will not want to do the extra work. These become the “hostages.”
There is a constant battle convincing them of the business continuity work. If they do commit, it will be half-hearted. Time is wasted as you fight to get them to attend a meeting, meet deadlines, program requirements, or schedule exercises for their new business continuity team. In this scenario, you will be forced to become an “ankle-biter.” The more you push, the more they push back, creating a vicious cycle. Ugh!
At this point, it is smart to go back to leadership and let them know your key contact “has a great deal of work on his (or her) plate.” Further, ask if there is another contact who can be assigned to collaborate with you for that leader’s business continuity operation?
One of two things will happen. One, the leader will ask, “What’s wrong?”
Tell them the truth! Be honest in a very professional manner about this issue. This is why your relationship-building with these leaders was so important. Now you have credibility with this leader.
Two, you will get a new key contact. Problem solved.
Get to know the new key contact, build that new relationship, and get the business continuity work started again.
Moving Forward
My years of doing business continuity have allowed me to learn the value and importance of relationship building. I did not fully “get it” at first. I did not understand how critical it is to collaborate with leaders and their teams to establish a good rapport. I would have never been able to establish and maintain the viable business continuity programs I have in my career without those connections and authentic exchanges with the many people with whom I have worked.
Now, you have to ask yourself if you have the right kinds of relationships with your business continuity leaders and their teams? Have you garnered enough credibility to convince them to commit to your business continuity program requirements?
If not, it is not too late to get started.
If you do have these relationships, then share your experience with colleagues. We can continue to promote the invaluable practice of never allowing our clients, customers, and business continuity teams to become victim to disasters or business disruptions. Establishing strong business continuity teams and capabilities across the organization allows us to withstand whatever risk or emergency shows up.
Natalie R. Wilson-Jones, MBCP, is a 24-year veteran of business continuity with practical experience in both the public and private sectors.
