When asked how they plan to deal with serious disruption, enterprises (large and small) confidently tell bankers, colleagues, and stakeholders that “It’s covered.” Enterprises need to test this confidence after wrenching changes due to Covid-19, supply chain breakage, and customers’ changes. To make “It’s covered” a reality senior management may need different paths for communications and intelligence gathering.
EkaLore recommends Senior Management consider these actions to make “It’s covered” reality:
1) Plan for Senior Management to talk with a wide variety of staff and stakeholders on a continuing basis. One effective method is to make sure that every manager gets to talk to a real customer to hear their voice.
2) Direct your managers to provide time and information sources for your most effective people (rising stars or change agents) to think about disruption and how to deal with them. (Special “task forces” or “planning committees” can be euphemisms for this.)
3) Put time aside for senior management to exchange the plans in their own areas with others. What are the treasury operations plans in the case of sudden currency changes? What if weather affected logistics? If raw materials get embargoed what are the effects on the enterprise? ‘It’s covered’ – more criticism will improve plans?
The key for enterprises is to apply a very small part of overall resources – including senior management time and attention – to build from the ‘intelligence’ to solid risk management actions.
Our next post describes how prior assumptions about information flow can put enterprises at greater risk of disruption.
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