What happened to strategic thinking?

Good day! Every time I hear, see, or say that greeting it reminds me of my mother and her fondness for the late Paul Harvey. The radio legend gave a long, dramatic pause before his signature signoff. Just when you thought you couldn’t wait anymore, you’d hear “… good day!”

This column is a round-up, much like the stories Harvey would have delivered, albeit from your humble scribe.

Standby For News

At the core of everything we accomplish is the PPBI Board of Directors. At our latest meeting, we were about to close when a board member asked our newest member, Scott Ream of Virtual Corporation, his impression of PPBI following his first two meetings with the organization.

What followed was a frank, unblemished, and keenly interesting discussion about PPBI expectations and opportunities. It started with the response, and I paraphrase here, “I find the PPBI board to be a lot more tactical and less strategic than many of the other boards of which I am a member,” said Ream.

You probably are not yet convinced how important this observation is to PPBI and the mission we champion. But let me tell you the discussion was very poignant, interesting, genuine, and brief. That comment was exactly what PPBI needed to hear.

What can we do to take PPBI from being “tactical” to the “strategic” mind set and who should we recruit to make it happen?

It is easy to see how we have become more tactical than strategic. Tactics are more flexible, which fits a volunteer organization that only meets once a month. Strategic planning takes more time and is harder to fine tune, not to mention much more risky.

Thank you, Scott. We encourage those who follow PPBI to continue to give us feedback as we strive to further mature by blending both tactical and strategic planning in achieving our core mission of linking private and public sectors in effective emergency management and disaster recovery planning.

PPBI Partner Round-Up

We want to thank our corporate members without whom we could not advance our mission. Here is a quick spotlight on a few of our corporate sponsors: Virtual Corporation, BC Management, Fusion Risk Management, The ICOR, Business Contingency Group, and Corporate One Federal Credit Union.

• Virtual Corporation – As I mentioned above, one of our board of directors Scott Ream, president of Virtual Corporation, along with his wife CEO Debra Ream, and Executive Vice-President Margaret Langsett, have offered their support and encouragement for a number of years. You can tell from Scott’s question above they are a very committed group.

• BC Management – Cheyenne Marling, president and founder of BC Management, called me this past week and we had a great talk about the industry and our shared insights. Cheyenne noted how diversity has made a big difference for her business in the depths of the recent recession. Their research arm on benchmarking of business continuity and reporting services continue to flourish while the strategic staffing segment wanes. We both agreed it was good to see our colleagues find new opportunities and she indicated there is a “buyers market” for unfilled business continuity positions out there.

• Fusion Risk Management – Another of our corporate members is Fusion Risk Management. David Nolan, CEO and founder, and John “JJ” Jackson, executive vice president, have supported PPBI for a number of years. Did you know that JJ was a PPBI Board member for many seasons and he would have really enjoyed the discussion on “tactics vs. strategic?” JJ was always honest with his remarks and a great counsel to PPBI and me personally.

• The ICOR – PPBI Board of Director Lynnda Nelson is the president of The International Consortium for Organizational (The ICOR). The ICOR continues to offer support and expertise in many facets. As a board member Lynnda has authored some of our class materials and facilitated workshops. She was instrumental in building partnerships with many of those supporting the social media aspect of our DRJ mock disaster in San Diego, 2012.

• Business Contingency Group – Lee Goldstein, another long time PPBI board member is the president of the Business Contingency Group (BCG) and consistently supports our training classes/workshops and is our west coast logistical support for PPBI.

• Corporate One – Last but not least is Ken Schroeder, vice president at Corporate One FCU where he manages their business continuity program. Ken will tell you he has many talents and master of none. We disagree, he not only teaches our classes, and if you haven’t take a class with Ken at the helm you don’t know what you’re missing, he also publishes one the best disaster recovery and business continuity newsletters out there the “PPBI Newsletter” of which you can view at http://ppbi.org. In addition to the teaching and the publishing of our newsletter Ken is our east coast logistical support and shares webmaster duties with Board of Director Jules Edwards, AVP at Deutsche Bank.

And Now … The Rest of the Story

I feel a little out of breath after that, but want to remind all of you to mark your calendars for the DRJ Fall World at its new venue in the Hilton San Diego Bayfront from September 22-25, 2013 and don’t forget to stop by our both to say hi. At the conference we will be presenting a workshop and facilitating a post conference class. Our Sunday afternoon workshop, (WS2) Incident Management Planning and Social Media, is a highly interactive workshop where you can learn why social media has such a dramatic impact on your incident management response. Following the end of the conference on Wednesday afternoon we will be facilitating (POC-5) Public and Private Integration: Tools, Techniques, and Tripwires, a half-day class to help private sector entities develop working relationships with public sector organizations so they can better prepare to continue, or resume critical operations faster during a regional disaster. Please come join us and help build partnerships that make a difference!

… … … Good day!

Deidrich E. Towne Jr., MBCP, MBCI, is a senior technical consultant for Hewlett Packard and chairperson of the PPBI Board of Directors. Towne has more than 40 years of experience in information technology committed to infrastructure management, business continuity planning, disaster recovery and incident management in the areas of consulting, business process re-design, project management, project implementation, documentation, exercise design, execution and training. He has transitioned from a business and industry first responder role to assist clients in assessing, designing and implementing recovery solutions for their data centers, networks and mission critical business processes.