Business Continuity Tip of the Month

We are the champions

The business continuity manager or co-ordinator is the person who does business continuity for the organisation, right?

Wrong! Although, sadly, it’s an attitude that prevails in an awful lot of organisations. And it’s pretty much a recipe for failure, in the form of an ineffective business continuity plan and a lack of capability behind it.

Because business continuity isn’t something that can be ‘done’ by just one person. Yes, they can write a plan, but they can’t magic up a capability in isolation and without a capability the plan’s unlikely to be much use when it’s needed. Getting this across to the rest of the organisation, however, can sometimes be a bit of a challenge.

One thing that can help significantly is to build a network of business continuity ‘champions’ to help spread the message and ensure their location’s, business function’s or team’s business continuity plan is kept up to date and proven through exercising and testing.

These need to be people who ‘get it’ and who are able to influence others and help them to get it too. So they’ll probably appreciate some training to help them carry out the role. And it’s a good idea to get some business continuity-related activities into their objectives, to remind them of their responsibilities and to give some recognition for the important role they’ll be playing.