Transcript
SPEAKER
I'm often asked, what is business continuity? Well, sometimes I think people make this quite complex- in fact, in some cases, too complex. So business continuity for me is a really, really simple thing. It's about any organisation- small organisation, medium, large organisation- managing itself or being able to manage itself through any period of disruption.
Another way which I also invite people to look at business continuity is to break the term down into two parts. So business- why is that important? Well, we're not necessarily talking about a business as in a private sector business, although clearly that's important. What I think we mean by business there is what is it that you actually do. Why are you an organisation, an entity, a business, a group of people? What are your key outcomes that you are looking to achieve?
And people then look at me and they say, well, that's quite obvious, isn't it? And the challenge that I always put back to them is, well, maybe go away and have a think about that. Because actually, people think they know everything about their business. But really, until they start looking at it in a bit more detail, they begin to realise that there's a lot more to their business than at first meets the eye. There are people that they don't know about. There are systems. There are processes. There are locations. There are external challenges that they're not aware of or they weren't aware of before. So business continuity is about understanding a lot more about your business or organisation.
Continuity- what do we mean by continuity? Continuity is talking about, OK, when we know a little bit more about our business, we're probably going to know a little bit more about the risks that our business faces or our organisation faces. It's then about saying, OK, fine. If any of those things were to happen, what would we do- if, for example, there was a fire, a flood, a power cut, a cyber attack? And you can probably think of a whole host of different things as well that potentially might affect your organisation.
What would you do if they were about to happen or indeed had happened? How would you manage that? What processes would you follow? What would you do if you couldn't get into your building? What would you do if one of your external suppliers, for example, could no longer deliver those items to your business that are so fundamental?
What would you do if you had stakeholders who were getting ready to have a meeting with you, and suddenly your meeting is cancelled? How would you deal with that- how would you communicate that? So there's something there about the continuity piece, about how would you manage your business through a period of disruption.
If anyone were to ask me from experience what is the best way other than actually dealing with an incident that business continuity can be brought to life, I would say absolutely exercises. Exercises are a really good way to bring teams together, a really good way to raise profile of risks, and a really good way to give people that real sense of what an incident might feel like. Because there are some quite interesting and unique pressures that you can face sometimes in incidents. So my advice to people with business continuity is exercise, exercise, exercise.
I'm also asked about top tips for anyone who's actually dealing with an incident, because it can be a fairly unique and sometimes scary environment. So my advice to anybody going into a business continuity incident is there is a temptation to rush in. Don't do that.
If you've got the opportunity, take a few moments, step back, and ask yourself, I guess, fundamentally, three questions. What's happened, what's happening, and what's about to happen? When you've answered those three questions, you'll be well on your way to coming up with what I think will be a very workable way to manage yourself through a period of disruption.