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People-Centered Business Continuity and Resiliency as a Competitive Advantage

Business Continuity is the ability to maintain operations/services in the face of a disruptive event. This disruptive event could be the departure of the CEO, a change in the marketplace, the crash of the organization’s ERP system, a pandemic virus, a hurricane, etc.

With this list of disruptive events, you can see that there are 3 main categories of disruptive events:

1. Business (Operational, Business, and Market)
2. IT / Business data
3. Catastrophes

Most work to insure Business Continuity is done in categories #2 and #3.  This work is called “Business Continuity Planning” (BCP), and includes Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP).  BCP and DRP are process-oriented. They focus on the development of contingency plans and redundancies to faster recover from disasters or disruptive events.

On the other hand, People-Centered Business Continuity’s main focus is on category #1.  Category #1 business disruptions are the most common and consistent source of lack of continuity, and the most important source of loss of productivity. It is so common that many leaders see it as a natural cost of doing business.  ...Nothing could be further from the truth!

People-Centered Business Continuity is the foundation that gives resilience to the organization and its workforce and will allow the BCP and DRP deployments to take place in a cohesive and sustained fashion.

People-Centered Business Continuity is a way of running the business
People-Centered Business Continuity is a way of running the business (Culture and Structures) that insures continued business performance under operational, business and market disruptions, such as: the unexpected departure of the CEO, any CXO, or even of a middle manager; a change in the business landscape; the restructuring or downsizing of the organization; the deployment of a new business model or ERP system; an M&A; etc.

These kinds of disruptions are continually happening in today’s organizations, and are often triggering each other.  When they happen, they create a drastic drop in the workforce’s performance, due to the uncertainty and changes they generate.  It also often creates the stagnation of the whole organization for six (6) to nine (9) months — the time it takes for the workforce to get back on their feet, to figure out the workings of the “new” environment and get back to their “business as usual” mode, and become productive again.

Business and Business Continuity are NOT about processes, they are about people.  
Business Continuity is about putting people rather than processes at the center of business operations and continuity.  The simple reason for this is that people are intelligent and adaptive, while processes are NOT.   

Many organizations use processes and systems as a way to lead their people, ensure consistent quality, and “insure” themselves against the category #1 disruptions.  It can work to a certain degree, but it is very limiting and creates major challenges, such as making the organization and its people unadaptive and resistant to change, and making the categories #2 and #3 Business Continuity Plans more challenging to deploy.  This leads to the need for BCP to include processes to mitigate not only the impact of crises on the workplace, but also on the workforce.

Driving people with processes reduces the most significant and adaptive asset of the organization, people, to the level of “dumb” robots.  Sadly, as mentioned earlier, a lot of organizations are set that way without realizing it.  This in turn results in the multitudes of stories about the difficulty of the workforce to adapt to change.  These stories are grounded in reality, but are self-inflicted by the organizations themselves.  People in a process-driven organization have difficulty to take change.  Employees in these kinds of environments “check” their brains, adaptability and proactivity at the door when coming to work, because they know that using them will put them in trouble, rather than help them succeed within the organization.

This relying on processes to drive the business becomes a vicious circle.  The more you rely on processes for organizational performance, adaptability and resilience, the less people are engaged, accountable, proactive and “adaptive,” and thus the more processes are needed to compensate for this lack of engagement and accountability.  

This quickly leads to an unmanageable quantity of processes to be developed, managed and enforced. ...this in turn makes it even harder for people to remember and follow the planned guidelines.  

People-Centered Business Continuity creates performance, accountability, adaptability and resilience
The People-Centered Business Continuity is built on the most versatile resources of organizations: their people.  When people:

• Understand and buy into the business vision and the organization’s business objectives
• Understand and are engaged in the role they play in the fulfillment of the organization’s vision and key objectives
• Are given the accountability, latitude and decision power to execute on the business vision and key objectives

... the organization becomes a living adaptive organism. Employees start to naturally act and react in a way that compensates for the the different disruptions.  They take accountability for Business Continuity and thus insure a sustained and sustainable organizational performance.

   

How to Create a People-Centered, and Driven, Business Continuity
The way to create a People-Centered Business Continuity is to provide employees at all levels of the organization with the vision, objectives, training, tools, environment and the latitude they need to take accountability for Business Continuity and performance.  

There are 6 interrelated elements in a People-Centered Business Continuity Program:

• A Clear Actionable Business Direction and Vision
• A Leadership Focus that is congruent with the Business Vision
• A Workforce’s Living Culture that supports the Business Vision
• A Continuous Succession Development
• A Products/Services Adoption fostering Program for clients and prospects
• An Adaptive Organization

A Clear Actionable Business Direction and Vision

A clear and actionable Business Vision clearly expresses how the organization and its workforce will fulfill the organization’s key business objectives. It gives 4 to 6 characteristics that all employees must emulate in everything they do, and gives specific examples of how each of these focuses take place in day-to-day business (see the article: The business vision: The most unclear and unconscious facet of most organizations or see the BusinessProfile-Matrix at www.strategy-driven.com)

A Leadership Focus that is Aligned with the Business Vision

The leadership focus is what organizations’ leaders “are” and “do” (consciously and unconsciously) to be successful as leaders and make things happen.  Many talented leaders have a Leadership Focus that is NOT supportive of their Business Vision.  A misaligned Leadership Focus sends double messages, creates confusion and frustration in the workforce, and slowly but surely destroys the engagement of the workforce (see the article: The best ill suited leaders, ...talented leaders that are ill-suited for their organizations or see the LeadershipFocus-Matrix at www.strategy-driven.com)

A Workforce’s Living Culture that Supports the Business Vision

The workforce’s Living Culture is what employees “are” and “do” (consciously and unconsciously) to be successful within their role in the context of their organization. The Living Culture reveals the “informal rules” that the employees must follow to fulfill their objective of being successful.  The definition of success varies from employee to employee: from growing within the organization, to making a lot of money, to having a balanced work/life, to staying out of trouble.  The one thing that doesn’t vary is the employees’ commitment (conscious or not) to being successful.  These informal structures are gradually put in place by the Leadership Focus of organizations’ management teams.  Since the leadership Focus of organizations’ leaders are rarely congruent with the Business Vision, the workforce’s Living Culture is rarely supportive of the Business Vision.  This is the main cause of the 70% failure of all organizational initiatives, the 60% financial failure of Mergers, and for 70% of Acquisitions not delivering the intended value. (see the Culture-Matrix at

)

A Continuous Succession Development

Succession planning and development must be the direct and individual responsibility of each CEO, Director, VP, Manager, and Team leader.   This is part of their Business Continuity contribution.  They are in charge of mentoring some of their direct reports to prepare them to seamlessly take over their role.

A  Products/Services Adoption Program for Clients and Prospects

Clients’ adoption must be part of Business Continuity efforts, because without a regular flow of loyal customers that value what you offer, there is no continuity possible. This element is about being in continuous touch with the conscious and unconscious desires, needs and priorities of your customers, and using this information to re-adjust the organization’s Business Vision and product/service delivery and support.  We are talking about “unconscious” desires, needs, and priorities here, because they are the ones that give you access to innovations that will bring the organization ahead of its competitors, and keep it ahead of its competition.   It will also allow the organization to systematically stay ahead of changing business environments and markets. (see the Clients’ Adoption-Matrix at www.strategy-driven.com)

An Adaptive Organization

The organization must be set-up to quickly adapt to changes.  This means that each employee must become an “identifyer” and a driver of change.  Employees at al levels must:

• Have a complete “view” of the organization’s Living Culture and their of own Success Focus profile (the individual result of the Culture-Matrix process)
• Be empowered to take control of his or her professional development, based on the needs created by the Business Vision of the organization.  
• Have the responsibility, accountability, latitude, and authority to adapt their work methods to fit their their and the organization’s needs (See article: Superior Business Execution: Constructed or Allowed?)

The organization also has to be made “Adaptive” and Resilient—reducing the productivity drop due to unexpected changes to “days” instead of months, by:

• Having the leader(s) define and “publish” their “actionable” business vision to their organization, department, or team
• Ensuring that every time a change occurs in the leadership, the first thing the new leader does is to publish his/her new actionable business vision
• Ensuring that within one week of the change in Business Vision, all employees have revised their professional development plan and work methods in collaboration with their immediate supervisor

Conclusion

From the People-Centered Business Continuity perspective, Business Continuity is a way of doing business, not an add-on.  It increases the stakeholders’ return and value, by :

• Making the workforce and the organization’s leaders involved, innovative and accountable
• Increasing the workforce’s proactivity
• Reducing the productivity drops to days instead of months
• Increasing performance and efficiency
• Increasing the organization’s bottom line

So, get started today.  It will be good for you, your organization, your workforce and you company’s investors and stakeholders.

Please send your questions or comments to efactor@strategy-driven.com  or see my profile => Marc Chouinard. You can also subscribe to my RSS feed.


For more information and tools to create a People-Centered Business Continuity, and to learn more about the People-Driven Business Continuity Program, email us at coach@strategy-driven.com, or visit our web site at www.strategy-driven.com.