In our first post – Resilience by Design, EkaLore discussed preparing project teams to deal with current enterprise disruptions. This post goes into a little detail about actions to take once a disruption has hit the enterprise/organization.
A) Begin executing prior plans – if there aren’t any, then the planning process will be accelerated starting now
B) Make and communicate clear decisions about priorities for resources, cash, and stakeholders
C) Assign dedicated resources just to deal with the crisis
The hardest part of any crisis is decision making and decision makers have no time. Communications can be disrupted, data is incomplete, authoritative information not available. Prior planning is the single best preventative to eliminate anticipated scenarios where this happens. If prior planning isn’t available, then execution must expect errors (sub-optimal choices) will be made and have to be handled later (cleaned up).
We’ll consider what to do with plans you’ve already made first.
Some things to know about those existing plans:
1) Plans will be obsolete the day they are ‘signed off’. Updated information, changes in staff, changes in responsibilities, -- and more will make them ‘not-quite-right’. People picking those plans up will need to be braced for that fact.
2) There will be gaps with no assigned resources. Critical junctions between planning areas (for example, covering headquarters and plants – but what about remote workers?) are inevitable and human staff to cover gaps are an important resource to have put aside.
3) It will take longer and cost more than anyone anticipates in advance. Who is empowered to sign for emergency expenses above normal finance rules? Who will take over responsibility when the first folks working on the situation get tired? Who can do efforts to limit more damage and take immediate positive steps to help people with common sense? This are “who” questions that go to the heart of “longer and costs more”.
4) No time means planning will get merged with actions an hour ago. People will have to get used to the pressure and problems not waiting for anyone to catch up.
A separate release will discuss key elements how to test existing plans. Even the most elaborate plans (expensive, time consuming, and totally overhead expense if never used – invaluable if needed) need testing, retesting, and refinement.
The next releases will deal with what needs to be done if plans are absent.
EkaLore has written many articles about resilience, as well as the related concepts of Agility and Sustainability. You can read other entries at www.ekalore.com/ars
If you’re looking for advice on how to improve your organization’s resilience set up a 20-minute free consultation with a senior analyst. We’ll be happy to share a few ideas with you!
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