Blog

Kit Merker, Microsoft

During a crisis, there is almost by definition a shortage of accessible information. Because of the time pressure a disaster creates, anything considered noise gets filtered out and ignored. However, if you could create a plan to track the right informatoin and make it available during difficult times, it could mean the difference between tragedy and a close call.

Creating and maintaining information repositories that can be used in a crisis is not necessarily cheap or easy, and you have to make a call about the ROI of this type of tool. If you're responsible for disaster & continuity planning, you will need to make the case for why the organization should take on the burden of additional systems. This should be easier in retrospect.

Consider the following questions and how this might help you be more effective in your next crisis.

How Did We Handle This Last Time?

If you've encountered the same or a similar problem before, it would be great to know what you did and who did it. Understanding how long it took might also help you set expectations with customers. Taking the extra time to record a few key pieces of information whenever you solve a production problem will help ensure that you can resolve similar issues in the future with speed & ease.

Who Else Is This Affecting?

Understanding the scope of impact of a particular symptom is a key to determining root cause. If your website is suddenly unreachable, you need to know if it is only related to you or to some portion of the Internet in general. Sometimes you can determine this with a simple test: Go to a high-availability website like www.yahoo.com. Other systems will likely need something more sophisticated. Ideally you can build this into your health and monitoring systems so your alerts can be intelligent.

What Are People Saying About Us?

Listening to what customers are saying is critical during a crisis. Ideally, you will know about problems before they do, but that might not be the case depending on what the issue is and where you are in the crisis lifecycle. Creating a place for people to raise issues easily is a great way to learn about issues early and respond to them quickly. You can also set up alerts for news feeds, blog posts and twitter terms so you can see if people are talking about you, which might indicate that something is out of the ordinary.

There are a variety of complaint sites out there (RipoffReport.com and Complaints.com, for example) where people can go and talk about how terrible you are. Monitoring these should give you insights if you have systemic service issues, some of which may be caused by systems instability or disaster response.

And, of course, never just delete negative comments!

What Should I Tell People?

When you suddenly realize that you caused a problem for your customers and you're not sure how to fix it, this is not the time to figure out how to tell them. At the same time, you can't predict what problems will be encountered and created prepared messages for all of them ahead of time.

Communication policies will guide your team to a clear message. Set some principles and goals about the tone, level of detail, channels and frequency of updates, both for internal and external audiences. Providing customers and employees with clear updates is key to gaining respect and a positive reputation during a crisis.

A simple way to think about this communication is Regret, Reason, Remedy. For a great example of this, look at how wordpress.com handles its downtime. There are other great examples and ideas on mashable.

What Data Have We Lost?

Figuring out what data has either been disclosed or is unrecoverable is very tricky. In the case of a discolsure attack, it may be impossible to ever learn what was lost. In that case, you have to take a pessimistic view.

How Can You Get This Information?

You have two key types of information that you need to track in order to be ready for a crisis: internal and external. Internal information tells you what you've done before, who can help with what kinds of problems, what options and rules exist internally for a crisis, and what is happening right now.

External data has to be collected from the outside world and made sense of in order to be useful. You can create direct channels of information: user communities, blogs, forums, or support tickets. You can also look at indirect information: Twitter topics and hash tags, third party review sites, blog posts and articles.

There are a variety of systems you could use to store your info, but the important step is to get it into a well known location, filtered to only the most critical and valuable information and organized logically. Once you start collecting information and making it available, you risk having so much that it's unwieldy.

Conclusion

It's hard to have the right information to make fast and accurate decisions in the heat of a crisis. But if you build the right systems, you may be able to get better early warnings and responses in place to turn down the heat on your next disaster.

What information has helped you during a crisis? Have you ever collected information that proved to be too noisy to be useful? What else is missing from the list? Add your ideas using the comments section below.

Kit Merker shares his obsession wth preventing and preparing for software disasters on www.softwaredisastersblog.com. He's worked in software for over a decade and currently works as an Evangelist at Microsoft, helping communications & media software companies embrace cloud and mobile device technology.

Scott Owens, PMP, CBCP, founder and Managing Director of BluTinuity LLC

Many business continuity and disaster recovery plans rely on traditional contact lists to record staff, vendors, contractors and other resources that are needed during a disaster. The contact list has been around for decades and is a staple of most organizations: name, title, role, email, cell phone, home phone, you know the drill. Is hasn’t changed much over the years because it is so simple.

But the challenge with these lists is keeping them up-to-date. In rapidly growing companies, the key people can change weekly. And as this resource list frequently changes, it is yet another tedious plan update. It is highly likely that portions of the business continuity plan are only updated on an annual schedule, which means that 50 weeks of the year it is not current.

Let me propose that it might be time to shred the old contact list. I know what you are thinking: "Is this guy crazy?” My idea really isn’t that radical. Put simply, I recommend that you replace the boring contact list with a well-managed social network as an active component to your business continuity or disaster recovery plan.

With the explosive growth of social media in the last several years, a new paradigm in contact management has emerged. Facebook now has over 800 million active users, meaning nearly 1 in 7 people on the planet use this social medium. LinkedIn boasts 135 million users, and the fledgling Google+ reports 65 million users with a growth curve that is expected to exceed 300 million users by the end of 2012.

Let’s dig into some of the features that would provide a valuable means to get started. Each of these major social networks has tools to segment or categorize your contacts, and these features could cluster recovery teams together by department or role. Further, these social networks offer groups or circles (think teams) as a means to filter and manage specific content useful for those members. They all allow for document sharing(think task lists or technical procedures). Status updates are key components to all of them – imagine getting real time updates on team recovery activities – this is a project manager’s dream.

And then you have the usability factor. Most people are already users of social networks, so using them in a crisis is a natural extension of their life. Concerns about the level of training required to use the tool or document are over. And because most everyone updates their own contact information, maintenance of the old contact list could be a thing of the past for continuity managers.

But perhaps the most important feature of all is that LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ all have apps for mobile phones, meaning this communication medium has complete portability.

I am guessing that the contact lists in your BCP or DRP doesn’t have the flare of Google+, LinkedIn, or Facebook, but they were never intended to be fun, were they?

Scott Owens, PMP, CBCP is the founder and Managing Director of BluTinuity LLC, a premier business continuity and disaster recovery solutions partner based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. BluTinuity provides guidance through the entire life cycle of business continuity and disaster recovery including capability assessment, continuity strategy design, plan development, team training, drill planning & facilitation, and the creation of a sustainable program to ensure that a culture of continuity is instilled in the organization.Scott can be contacted at info@blutinuity.com. For more information, visit http://blutinuity.com. 

George F. Brown, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Blue Canyon Partners

The business implication of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan was a renewed awareness of the importance of security of supply. Soon after the March disaster, the business press began to regularly report supply chain problems. We’ve read of new car model introductions that were delayed, of multiple plants that were shuttered because of shortages of some parts, and lengthening leadtimes for many products. Such problems have extended far beyond the electronics, auto, machinery, and chemicals industries where problems were first predicted. The spotlight on security of supply was already there for many firms that were already experiencing broken supply chains here and there, the result of business failures and cutbacks during the 2008-09 recession.

At a recent meeting, a senior executive with responsibilities for his firm’s supply chain commented that his firm’s CEO had “clearly drank the security of supply Kool-Aid”. When describing the priorities that were communicated to him as part of the annual planning process, he said that the message to his organization was the equivalent of “Don’t even look at your cards, just go ‘All In’.”

Suppliers are clearly important to almost every firm – many manufacturers rely upon third-party suppliers for half or more of their value added – and the attention to security of supply is warranted. But going “All In” is as much of a mistake as is failing to recognize the value that suppliers can contribute. Such an approach also threatens to reverse the important gains that have been realized by identifying sources that can contribute to a manufacturer’s cost competitiveness, a factor of increasing importance as new competitors come onto the scene from emerging markets like China and India, offering almost as good products at great prices. There are multiple approaches to security of supply, ranging from multiple source relationships to increased inventories.

And in fact some supplier relationships are so critical that going “All In” with them is an appropriate decision, one that can reward your firm’s shareholders. Security of supply is one, among many, factors that define the rationale for such strategic supplier relationships. But rather than just pushing all of the chips to the middle of the table, the change in the relationship should be managed in a way that motivates the best contributions of these strategic suppliers, asking far more of them than just security of supply.

Getting To The “Short List”

The first step in the process must be that of culling from the long list of suppliers those that are truly of strategic importance. In experience after experience, we’ve found that the list of truly strategic suppliers is short, even for Fortune 100 firms. There may be many ingredients for which it is important to ensure security of supply, but most likely there are only a few instances in which establishing a strategic relationship with a supplier is the right route to that goal.

In CoDestiny[1], we provide a framework for identifying which of a firm’s suppliers are of strategic importance. Some suppliers achieve that stature as a result of their significance to the company’s strategy and operations. Others achieve it as a result of the importance placed on the supplier’s ingredient by the customer’s customers – the organizations in later stages of the customer chain. A few suppliers score highly on both of these dimensions. Among the metrics that goes into the assessment of a supplier’s strategic importance are ones that assess the implications of supply disruptions, the availability of alternatives to the ingredients sourced from that supplier, and the impact on margins from price increases associated with such ingredients.

These factors are important, but no more so that other elements of the assessment. The increased attention of C-Level executives on the supply chain creates an opportunity for a comprehensive determination of which suppliers are strategically important. Supply chain executives should take advantage of this period of heightened attention to review suppliers and implement new relationship plans for those which make it onto the leaderboard in terms of strategic importance.

For the suppliers determined to be strategically important, the objective of the supply chain organization should be to motivate stronger and stronger contributions from those suppliers along the metrics that make them strategically important. In most instances, those metrics involve contributions that go far beyond the cost of their products and services or their ability to ensure an ongoing stream of on-time, in-full deliveries.

The examples that have emerged as to the strategic contributions of suppliers span many dimensions. We have seen suppliers whose contributions are critical to their customer’s ability to shorten product development cycles and get new products to market quickly. We have seen suppliers that have helped their customers achieve breakout gains in energy efficiency and others who have enabled their customers to meet new environmental targets. We have seen still other suppliers play a vital role in helping their customers to successfully enter a new geographic market with unique requirements due to regulation, culture, or other factors. The list of contributions that involve factors other than product cost or security of supply is nearly endless, and it is in fact a rare corporation whose executives are unable to tell a “supplier success story” in which a supplier contribution made a major difference to the customer’s market position and profitability.

Unleashing the creativity of strategic suppliers challenges many firms. One reason is that the majority of suppliers are not strategic, and the processes that have been developed to manage these relationships are often inconsistent with motivating collaboration by strategic suppliers. Such processes often involve arms-length relationships, active efforts to bring competitors to the table, and “information hoarding” on the part of the customer organization. None of these fall into the category of best customer practices linked to managing strategic supplier relationships. So it often takes a new and unfamiliar approach by the supply chain organization to take strategic supplier relationships to a higher level. This reality is another reason why the “All In” approach must only be implemented with a carefully selected group of suppliers, those where an investment in a new approach to the relationship is likely to yield major rewards for the company’s shareholders.

Implementing An “All In” Relationship

The “All In” approach to the relationship with selected strategic suppliers is not a business-as-usual recommendation. Asking for more from suppliers, and getting it, poses some very real challenges that will task both of the organizations involved in the supplier-customer relationship. The reason is that reaching a new, higher level of contribution from suppliers will require new modes of behavior and a new focus to many relationships.

Best practice approaches to strategic supplier relationships offer tremendous potential. One of the most effective such practices involves taking a broader view of the supplier’s impacts on the customer organization. As part of various consulting projects, we’ve systematically mapped the way a supplier’s product connects to the customer’s operations and processes, trying to identify and quantify the “adjacency costs” that are connected to the supplier’s product. In many instances, this mapping process has uncovered the reality that the adjacency costs are substantially larger than the price paid for the supplier’s product itself.

Such adjacency costs fall in many categories, depending on the industry and processes involved. Some of them are obvious – logistics costs, inventory costs, etc. Others are also rather straightforward to identify and quantify – the manufacturing costs tied to use of the supplier’s product and the quality control process costs associated with the supplier’s product are examples in this regard. Still other adjacency costs are a bit further removed – warranty and post-sale service costs linked to the supplier’s product are examples in this regard.

It sometimes takes imagination and hard work to trace all of the adjacency costs associated with a supplier’s product, but the rewards can be substantial. For when these costs are understood, they provide a basis for a collaborative effort on the part of the supplier and the customer to find ways to “take these costs out”. This approach also creates a meaningful statement to the supplier that the relationship is not business as usual, but that the customer organization is willing to put meaning to their statement of moving to an “All In” relationship.

The opportunity generates excitement on the part of suppliers. In one interview, a supplier commented that “We’ve been working for over a decade with this customer to try to find ways to continue to reduce the cost of a $10 component they buy from us. Now we are working with them to find out how to achieve savings in a $200 bundle of adjacency costs. For the first time in a long while, I think we can make some major contribution.” The perspective contained in this supplier’s comment underscores the benefits to the customer that can be realized. They make it clear that “All In” relationships are two-way commitments, and the supplier that wants to sustain a strategic relationship has a responsibility to bring value to the customer.

Often an immediate reaction to this concept is that the responsibility to manage these adjacency costs lies with the customer, not the supplier. The evidence is that such thinking is shortsighted. Often, the changes that are required to reduce at least some of the adjacency costs must be taken by the supplier, and in many instances, the insight and knowhow to identify such possibilities lies with the supplier more so than with the customer. In project work, we frequently see a supplier tell their customer that “We’ve seen that before in another application, and here’s what we can do to solve the problem”. It’s always true that a greater level of optimization is possible when a full system perspective is taken, and this is one of those instances. Involving the supplier in collaboration to reduce adjacency costs is just good business. It opens the door for greater contributions.

Summary

Ensuring security of supply will challenge most businesses over the next few years. It will require an evaluation of which suppliers are truly strategic, and which are not, with security of supply one among the factors that enter into that determination. Taking that step opens the potential to elevate strategic relationships to an even higher level, solving not only the problem of security of supply, but also asking strategic suppliers to themselves go “All In” and begin to take actions that can contribute to ongoing growth and profitability for years to come. The payoff for both organizations from such a fresh approach to the supplier-customer relationship can be enormous.

George F. Brown, Jr. is one of the founders and CEO of Blue Canyon Partners, Inc. He brings to his clients extensive experience and unique perspectives about growth strategy in business and government markets. In recent years, he has helped clients develop and implement strategies to achieve global market presence and reach decisions relating to segmentation strategies, pricing, channel management, and major customer relationship management. He is the coauthor of CoDestiny: Overcome Your Growth Challenges by Helping Your Customers Overcome Theirs, published by Greenleaf Book Group Press of Austin, TX in 2010. In addition, his work on business-to-business strategy has resulted in over one hundred other publications in various professional journals over the past decade. George earned a B.S. in Administration and Management Science, an M.S. in Industrial Administration, and a Ph.D. in Economics, all from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, where he was awarded the Alexander Henderson Award in Economic Theory.

Luke Simpson, Editor

Take a look at the Centre for Disease Control’s (CDC’s) report on its Cities Readiness Initiative (CRI), released September 2011, and it immediately becomes clear that this ranking isn’t all that Forbes makes it out to be. Before we make Albuquerque the preparedness punching bag, let’s take a look at the scope and intention of the CDC’s rankings.

-- The scores are based on the plans put in place by state and local authorities to “effectively respond to a large scale bioterrorist event by dispensing antibiotics to their entire identified population within 48 hours of the decision to do so.” This is a very specific, public-health oriented scope that doesn’t assess the community’s preparedness as a whole.

-- Relating to the first point, the CDC’s initiative does not, to my knowledge, look at the public-private partnerships that a community has in place. Such partnerships are a key indicator of a community’s preparedness/resilience.

-- There is no mention of critical infrastructure. This is understandable given the scope of the rankings, but it helps make the point that this is not a comprehensive study of preparedness.

-- The author of the Forbes article averages the scores from the past three years. I think this is a bad approach when discussing preparedness: In most cases it doesn’t really matter how prepared a community was three years ago — it’s how prepared they are today that is important.

-- The City of Albuquerque’s score drops drastically from 89 in 08/09 to 37 in 09/10. The score for the larger Albuquerque metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in 07/08 was a dismal 26, but the technical assistance review (TAR) that year did not include the City of Albuquerque itself. These wild fluctuations and exemptions make me question the accuracy of the findings.

-- I’m not disputing New York City’s place at the top of the rankings, but the score of 99.7 used by Forbes excludes a number of counties in the MSA. The actual New York City MSA score came to 93, which would barely keep it in the top ten of 09/10 results.

-- Many of the MSAs that scored 90 or above in 08/09 were exempt from the 09/10 TAR due to the demands of the H1N1 response. As a result, the 08/09 score was assigned to the 09/10 TAR.

I hope this does not come across as an attack on the CDC. My intentions are to give some context to the CDC’s rankings and correct any misconceptions that could arise after reading the Forbes article.

What do you think are the least and most disaster-ready cities? Shoot me an email at luke.simpson@advantagemedia.com.

Alan Nicol, Executive Member, AlanNicolSolutions

We human beings like to think of ourselves as being very adaptable. Our ability to adjust and change is what makes us survive and thrive, in nature as well as business. Yet, we naturally and customarily resist change when it is pressed upon us.

If we are trying to drive change within our organizations and we have the luxury of commanding that the change take place, then we can force our way through that resistance so long as we remain resolute and actively press it forward. However, for those of us in advisory roles or change agent roles, we don’t get to dictate to business leaders what they would or should do. We can only influence and propose.

Also, for some leaders, and for some business cultures, dictating and forcing change just isn’t what they are about. How then, can we inspire change and convince people to go along when the natural state is to resist? Let’s look briefly at two of our most popular change-driving programs in business for some clues.

The Lean methodology and Six Sigma both drive change on a regular basis. Lean drives continuous change, generally, through incremental improvements on a regular basis. The very atmosphere of the Lean environment is about change and the goal or desire of the entire business and all of its personnel is to improve performance from one day to the next.

Similarly, the Six Sigma methodology drives continuous improvement on a regular basis, creating a similar environment of constant change-for-improvement. Six Sigma’s tactic to inspire change is to use data to paint objective pictures of the current and potential future states. It separates the emotions and habits from the process and makes decisions objective.

Both systems and methods create and then rely upon an environment of continuous improvement and, therefore, continuous, intentional change. However, those systems don’t necessarily help us when it comes to incorporating a newly acquired business into our existing systems and culture, nor do those states form of themselves. If we want to change the way our organizations do things, such as starting a Lean or Six Sigma program for example, we can’t simply rely on an environment of continuous improvement to enable it. We must drive the upset.

Changing people’s behavior requires disruption, which is of course uncomfortable, and, therefore, it is resisted. How, if we are not going to command it, can we cause people to volunteer to go through the uncomfortable disruption and learn to do things differently? Six Sigma’s use of data and logic just isn’t enough in the case of major behavioral change.

Here is an example most of us can identify with quickly: diet. We all know that our health can be vastly impacted by our dietary choices and our exercise habits, yet few of us exercise good habits on a regular basis. Even overwhelming data doesn’t inspire us to choose differently when the “munchies” strike and the cookie stares us in the face.

Those of us who have made the lifestyle change, typically, didn’t do so because the data suggested it. We either watched loved ones suffer or become ill before we found our motivation, or we received our own wake-up call. The decision to change our eating and exercise habits, and the discipline to stick to that decision, is not made because we read and understood the data. It is made because we experienced emotions that motivated us to make the change.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle posited that all human actions have one or more of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. We can argue with Aristotle if we want, and I think that translating emotions from Greek to English is hazardous to begin with. For example, fear is a very good reason for us to take action, and I don’t know if Aristotle would include that motivator in the category of compulsion or passion. Aristotle’s suggestion none-the-less gives us a very good place to start.

If we can address a multitude of human motivators with our proposals to change, then we stand a better chance of convincing our peers, our leaders, and our personnel, to accept, rather than resist the change. Best of all, if we can get them to desire the change, then it happens all by itself – well almost.

When proposing change, use human motivators against each other to make a case for the change. For example, use reason such as a solid go-forward plan to mitigate fear. In that plan, incorporate elements that will provide uncomfortable feedback when habits and compulsion result in actions contrary to the new behavior. The plan can be used to counter nature or reason that would compel the audience to suggest or perceive that the change is too difficult or demanding.

Using reason to battle reason or compulsion can counter the arguments against a proposal, it can unravel excuses, but it won’t complete the job of convincing someone to change. To do that, leverage your audience’s passions, nature, or take advantage of chance.

For example, if friendly competition between project teams or functional groups is part of the nature of your organization’s culture, then use that to create a desire for change. Start a competition between teams or groups to see who can manifest the change and the positive results the best or the fastest. If you are the middle manager of an engineering team, for example, and you want to get your team to adopt best practices for the new design software, challenge your peer manager’s team to a contest. Goals and rewards can further add to the motivation, inspiring desire. Just remember, the challenge is the result. The change is the means to the end. If you just challenge your team to change, it won’t work.

Address your organization’s passions. If your organization is passionate about innovation, or the environment, or complains about how difficult things are, then use those passions in your argument to change. Demonstrate how the change is innovative, or will enable better innovation, how it will lessen the business’s environmental impact, or suggest that if goals are exceeded then a donation to environmental causes will be made, or show them how it will make difficult things easier.

Look for events that chance may have recently brought to light that will get your audience’s attention. Like a loved one that suffers a sudden health event because of poor habit, utilize events to help your audience suddenly feel the urgency to change. It can be events that directly affect your business, or they can be events that affect other respected businesses or competitors.

Finally, talk with your sales people for inspiration. An age-old sales tactic is to make the prospective buyer feel the benefits of the service or product you are selling. When people feel the difference, the decision becomes emotional, not logical, and we readily make the decision to change by buying the offered solution. Chances are, you own an HD TV. I’ll bet that the desire to own one didn’t come from a data sheet advertizing 1080i pixilation rates. It came when you saw one either at a friend’s house or in the store and experienced the difference for the first time.

Find a way, either with a simulation, or by making your executives get their hands dirty, to make your decision-makers experience the difference for themselves. This can often be the very best way to overcome complacency and turn it into urgency.

Even when we are successful in negotiating the decision to make the change, and convince the majority of those who must change behavior of the necessity or importance to do so, it will take a great deal of leadership to get your team or organization through the change. A well-made plan and constant communication will help prevent your audience from changing their minds when the discomfort of overcoming habits and compulsion kicks in.

One of my favorite quotes concerning change is from the Frenchman, Antoine de Saint Exupery. He said, ”If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” To me there are two very important words in his quote that help us to inspire change. They are “teach” and “yearn.”

When making your proposal to change, consider that you are teaching your audience to perceive what you perceive. It consists of more than just facts and data; perception includes vision and feeling. Similarly, share with your audience the vision and possibility that you yourself perceive. Transfer your vision and your desire to them. Make them desire the results of the change.

None of this is easy. It takes leadership and negotiation skill, but I find that considering and addressing those human emotions and motivators, as Aristotle defined them or as we define them ourselves, helps plan arguments, proposals, and kickoff speeches with much greater success. I believe that they can help any of us.

As you kick off your next big change, or introduce your next system, don’t rely on reason and data alone to explain the need. Address other human motivators, such as fear, compulsion, habit, passion, and desire. Use passion and desire to battle against habit and compulsion. Use reason to eliminate excuses. Most of all inspire the change by transferring your vision into a desire on the part of your audience to achieve the end.

Stay wise, friends.

If you like what you just read, find more of Alan’s thoughts at www.bizwizwithin.com.