Rich Pierle takes a closer look at how Business Continuity Planning (BCP) can help your Business Survive The Coronavirus Pandemic and other calamities. How should organizations and leaders address the Coronavirus pandemic? The importance of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) for organizations and actions leaders must take during times of crisis. Through anecdotes as a CIO for global services, Rich draws many parallels between situations he dealt with in the past, to apply to the current COVID-19 global pandemic. He also shares the leadership mindset framework he uses to effectively manage during these challenging periods.
In this post:
- Social distancing and adjusting the work environment
- Understanding the human side of coronavirus
- How to Bring people together & help each other during a crisis
- Balancing constrained resources and risk mitigation
- Testing BCPs and keeping them up to date
- Wrap up and review of your BCP
- Rules to follow for all leaders during an emergency
- Leadership, post-incident response, and root cause analysis
Social distancing and adjusting the work environment
Over the last couple of weeks, people have gone from disbelief to full crystallization of the reality of the pandemic, and all of us need to take action.
At Pier Digital, our clients are mostly Fortune 500 companies, and everyone is asking, what is the impact and how do we work differently? Companies are learning to implement and adjust to social distancing and remote work to protect the safety of their workforce. Effective leaders always want to do what’s best for their organization and keep their workforce safe. So how do we learn to work while social distancing or working remotely?
Most of our clients at Pier Digital have a contingency plan for the Coronavirus, and technology leaders are already evaluating how to execute work differently under these new challenges. New software and equipment, previously thought of as unnecessary, is being purchased and implemented.
No one knows how long the pandemic will last, and this is an opportunity to see which leaders will come out on top as a result of adapting to these new changes. The building is on fire. Are you running away from it, or are you running into it to help solve your organization’s problems?
Understanding the human side of Coronavirus
Start by trying to understand the human side of this, people are worried about their families. It could be a huge distraction for your workforce if your employees are worried about children at school or elderly relatives, some who may be far away. So first, you should simply check in with your team. Ask: are you okay? Then, assess what changes are needed in order to move forward with some level of operational normalcy.
How to bring people together & help each other during a crisis
As a leader during a crisis, you need to be able to maintain normalcy by implementing an alternative focus.
Historically, before a naval battle, ships were painted. A task that would take the focus off the battle and replace it with routine activity. The Coronavirus pandemic is dominating the conversation and that may not change for a while. But what if you could refocus your organization with something more than just regular day-to-day work.
- What kind of new projects could you create for your team?
- How about the project of moving your team off-site to work remotely?
You’re going to need to move people from the facilities that you’ve already fortified with phones, desks, and other office equipment to now having to supply them with tools they’ll need to work off-site.
- What tools are needed?
- Do you have the tools in your inventory?
- What tools do you need to purchase?
- What is the order of steps to enable the team?
- What functions and team members require on-site presence?
They may not have what they need in order to perform those aspects of their jobs at their home.
Unfortunately, not all organizations can be run remotely. Like education and sports, they’ll be entirely canceled until further notice. Some companies will suffer this same fate, specifically those that require more of a physical presence. There lies the essence of creating and putting in place a BCP. The BCP will give you the instructions to your business to continue in the face of disaster.
Balancing constrained resources and risk mitigation
During my time working as CIO with Becton Dickinson, a hurricane destroyed one of our manufacturing locations in Puerto Rico. When this happened, you couldn’t buy anything in Puerto Rico unless you had cash. Our solution was to fly cash into Puerto Rico to cover for all our employees there.
The lesson learned, and what we apply to my current client organizations is the need to get people to come together and help each other to get through the crisis.
The charts are telling us that we’re not through the COVID-19 pandemic, and we may be in for a long ride. Whether it’s helping your family, your neighbor, or your customer; it’ll be necessary to keep things moving along, all the way to the end.
Testing BCPs and keeping them up to date
Companies have been facing different types of disasters and not all of them are made as public as COVID-19. Many companies have been targeted with cyber-attacks, or experienced natural disasters, like the hurricane in Puerto Rico, and we have to ask ourselves:
- What were the things we did right and wrong?
We discovered there was a constant tradeoff between the cost and the risk of mitigation. With BCP, we mitigate the future of unknown risks. Financial decisions made years previously may be the root cause of why prevention or mitigation efforts are not in place currently.
Another example, when I was responsible for shared service centers, one of our locations was in Santiago, Chile, where earthquakes would periodically happen. All of our service center associates for that location had laptops, and in the event they were unable to access the facility due to an earthquake, the BCP dictated they could continue their work remotely from any internet connection.
Due to a tight budget, some companies may think, “We’re going to save $1,200 per workstation to get our team desktops instead of laptops.” But in reality, one day of loss of work in a shared service center probably covers the delta.
Getting leaders to the point of purchase with restricted budgets, to make better purchasing decisions so they have the tools to weather the storms they don’t have the foresight to plan for.
- Power outages
- Hurricanes
- Earthquakes
- Pandemics
- Cyber-attacks
- Zombie apocalypse
We all hope it never happens but it can and when it does, resources will be used differently.
During one of our emergencies, we begged to get satellite phones from AT&T so we could communicate with our plant. These are the kinds of scenarios that need to make their way into your BCP.
Your normal suppliers may have the same challenges as you and may struggle to manufacture your needed goods. Adding network capabilities is more difficult if it’s not pre-planned and needed at the moment. The moment a disaster strikes is the wrong time to find out if you were really prepared.
Wrap up and review of your BCP
A good practice at the back end of this is doing a wrap-up and review of how your BCP actually stacks up against the experience and expectations.
BCPs need to include everything that’ll be needed, which should be tested, and not just be written out on some dusty old documents. Effective BCPs are living, breathing documents and should be exercised with frequency because the world is ever-changing. Letting your BCP lag with time will only mean that someday when you need it, it won’t be there to manage your risk or protect your company.
Regardless of the type of emergency crisis, you’re facing, whether it’s a pandemic or a power outage, the first rule is to address the event. Leaders may need to move resources and technologies right in the middle of the event.
The command and communications center should be a primary focus for leaders in times of crisis. A solid place to handle the emergency, to interpret data, make decisions, and delegate workloads through effective communications is critically important. Everyone in your ORG chart needs to be in the communications loop, from the CEO right down to the agent in the call center.
All leaders and organizations should have a handle of this. Smart business managers realize the value of building long-term relationships.
Rules to follow for all leaders during an emergency
CEOs and company presidents need to make it clear to their management teams, take care of customers’ needs during challenging times, even if at a loss. The better we can do that, the more likely the customer will return when we’re given the all-clear. Leaders should ask:
- How do you remove the short-term focus?
- How do you verify known expectations among customers and associates?
The way you “handle” the emergency is as much a part of this as the emergency itself.
Lead with dignity
Lead with gravitas
Or
Run around with your head on fire
The organizations that are grabbing this pandemic by the horns and taking charge, those are the organizations that you want to watch, pay attention to, learn something from and when the dust clears, work with them.
Customers and clients are watching and passing judgment. Having a solid BCP with the proper pre-planning will show in the continuum of your business. Others will have to race to catch up.
Leadership, post-incident response, and root cause analysis
Bringing everything together starts with leadership, when it’s unraveling from the top, it’s not the employee’s problem.
On the back end, evaluating the effectiveness of your BCP should entail doing some post-incident response from a root cause standpoint. In IT, the root cause is part of everything we do. Companies want an objective third party to determine what went right, wrong, and what should be done differently from an IT and shared services perspective.
Better yet, you should ask, “ what are the IT and shared service root causes we should have been thinking about but haven’t.”
For example, determining the need to delegate digital labor to bots. This is a great opportunity for companies to look at potential investments in new technologies that may take some of the load off the existing staff.
When you’re in a significant situation, like when some of your workforces isn’t necessarily focused on the work, they’re focused on themselves. The reality is they need to be focused on work because you want to verify that they’ll continue to support the organization.
In times of crisis, you want your workforce to be able to focus on their positional duties. If they’re worried about the safety of themselves and their families, any work they’re able to do will be less effective.
Episode Summary
Rich Pierle, host of Pier Digital Podcast, recently released his first podcast episode about how organizations and leaders should address the coronavirus pandemic. In this important episode, Rich talks about the importance of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) for organizations and what leaders must do in terms of taking action during times of crisis. Through anecdotes from his time at Becton Dickinson over an 8-year period as former CIO and EVP for global services, Rich draws many parallels between specific situations he dealt with in the past, to now, the current COVID-19 global landscape. Rich also shares the leadership mindset framework he uses to manage effectively during very challenging periods.
What to Listen For
- 2:06 The notion of social distancing and working differently
- 3:18 Understanding the human side of coronavirus
- 5:40 The importance of BCPs that are tested and up to date
- 6:30 How to bring people together during a crisis and help each other get through
- 7:04 Balancing constrained resources and risk mitigation
- 9:57 Wrap up and review of your BCP
- 11:02 The absolute first rule for all leaders during an emergency
- 13:33 The importance of leadership, post incident response, and root cause analysis
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Transcription
Rich Pierle:
Hello and welcome. I’m Rich Pierle, and this is The Pier Digital podcast. This show is for technology leaders who want to discuss important topics and issues of the day from a technology perspective, everything from digital transformation, business continuity planning for coronavirus, legacy infrastructure re-platforming and much, much more. I’ll be helping to guide your transformational journey, navigating through tough terrain while overcoming obstacles and reducing costs and mistakes. Whether you’re a CEO, CIO, or just trying to plug into the digital landscape, you need proven strategies and someone who has been there and done that. You can learn more and stay up to date at pierdigital.com.
Announcer:
Rich Pierle is CEO and managing partner at pier digital advisory solutions, a boutique consultancy that supports companies on the journey from legacy technologies and business models to the realization of a digitally operating model. Rich shares inside from the perspective as former of CIO and EVP for global services at Becton Dickinson. Now a leading independent consultant helping fortune 500 leaders take advantage of accelerating technology change, digitally transforming the organizations and culture. All opinions expressed by Rich Pierle and Pier Digital and podcast guests are solely their own opinions.
Rich Pierle:
So I would tell you over the last couple of weeks, I think people have gone from, this isn’t going to happen, it’s not real, to this week, I think for many companies and for many organizations it’s crystallized that this is real, it’s here, and everybody needs to start taking action. My customers are large fortune 500 companies. And everybody is really looking at, what is the impact? And revisiting, how do I work differently? The whole notion of social distancing and, how do I move my workforce out of the infrastructure that I’ve set up and have people working at home so that they can protect their people, but at the same time still continue to work and do the right thing for their organization? So I can tell you, most of the executives that I’m working with are totally focused on contingency planning around the coronavirus. All of the technology leaders are really evaluating, how do we work differently?
Rich Pierle:
In some instances, they’re buying software and equipment because they had a different way of working that didn’t necessarily contemplate this situation that we’re in. It’s probably going to be a situation we’re going to be in for some time. And so it’s an opportunity to really see which leaders are at the forefront and really making those changes and helping their organizations. Are you running away from the building or you’re running to it trying to really help and solve your organization’s problems? First you have to understand the human side of this. People are worried first and foremost about their families. If they’ve got children at school, if they’ve got elderly relatives at different parts of the country, are they safe? And how are they making out? Because obviously it’s a huge distraction for all of us in the media today.
Rich Pierle:
And so just checking in with your team to make sure, are you okay? And then I think, understanding that it’s, okay, now what are the changes that we have to do in order to as much as possible keep some level of normalcy for your folks and for the organization? What are some of those projects? In the military, before war, they’d have people paint the ships because they didn’t necessarily want them focused on the battle at hand. They wanted them focused on some routine activity. And so what are those activities that you could focus your organization on beyond just the regular day to day work, and keep them focused on something other than coronavirus, which is just dominating the conversation and will for some time? And I think that’s what we need to be doing as leaders, is giving people alternative focuses, making sure that we’re checking in and then really focused on, how do we address this, and how do we, as I said, maintain some semblance of normalcy?
Rich Pierle:
Let’s just take the very specific, I’ve got to move people from our facilities where all the phones, all the desks, all the infrastructure, and now I’ve got to support them with more of an internet infrastructure, and what are some of those tools? Do I have the tools in my inventory? Do I have to go out and buy some tools? What are those things I need to do in order to enable them? And there may be some people that still have to come to work because of their job. They may not have what they need in order to perform those aspects of their jobs at their home. Over the last couple of weeks leaders have done that.
Rich Pierle:
Now in some instances, like if you look at what’s going on to education and sports, they’re just canceling everything. You know, we’re just going to stop until further notice. And I think some companies are going to have to do that as well. I think it’s going to be industry specific. I think it’s going to be company specific. And what are those business continuity plans that companies are putting in place? I think that’s the other part of this is, it’s really testing business continuity because that’s a lot of what this is. How do I continue my business in the face of a quote unquote disaster? And how do I keep things going?
Rich Pierle:
When I was at BD, we had a hurricane that rocked one of our manufacturing locations in Puerto Rico. And what I thought made that really great is you had all of these different functions led by the manufacturing organization come together on, how do we help connect the facility, how do we make sure that the people get paid? Because it was a situation where you couldn’t buy anything in Puerto Rico unless you had cash. So we had to fly cash into Puerto Rico to cover for our employees there. And everybody really came together. And so as I think about this and I think about the organizations I’m working with, how do people come together and how do we help each other get through this? Because if you look at some of the charts the United States is really only at the tip of the iceberg as it relates to this event, and there’s a lot more that we’re going to have to go through. And so whether it’s helping your customer, whether it’s helping your neighbor or your family, how do you work through that in a way to keep things moving?
Rich Pierle:
Companies have been facing different types of disasters and not all of them we’ll be aware of. This one is obviously immensely public, and you can’t get away from it. But many companies have been targeted with cyber-attacks, and so just like we did with the Puerto Rico incident at BD, we went back and we said, okay, what are the things that we were doing right? What were the things that we were doing wrong? And what you find is that there’s a constant tradeoff between the cost that you have to spend today and the risks that you’re trying to mitigate, right? The unknown risks that you’re trying to mitigate in the future. And what you find a lot of times when you go back and do the root cause analysis on, well, how come I didn’t have this in place or that in place? Is there was financial decisions that were made maybe five years ago.
Rich Pierle:
And a good example is, I was responsible for shared service centers, and all of our associates in shared service center had laptops. We had one location in a Santiago, Chile that periodically would have earthquakes. And sometimes the people couldn’t get to the building. And so with that part of the business continuity plan, we know that because people had internet access, they could still work and do some semblance of their job from their homes.
Rich Pierle:
Some companies have said, “Hey, you know what? We’re going to only have desktops because a desktop is only $800, and a laptop I may have to spend $2,000.” So the reality is, one day of loss of work in a shared service center probably covers the delta. And so how did you get leaders at that point of purchase with constrained budgets to make the right purchasing decisions so that when that event happens, and God, we all hope it never happens, but we found that more and more whether it’s power outages in certain parts of the world, whether it’s a pandemic like we’re facing now, it’s causing us to do things differently, and the reality whether it’s what happened today, whether it’s a hurricane, the resources that you need are going to be constrained when that event is going on.
Rich Pierle:
A good example was satellite phones. We had to call in a number of favors in order to get some satellite phones from AT&T so that we could have conversations with our plant. Right? And it’s things like that that nobody thinks of as they’re going through an event like this. My guess is, there’s going to be a constraint on getting computers for people because China’s impacted, and are they going to have the manufacturing capacity? If I need to put in additional network capabilities, unless you’ve done some of that upfront as part of pre-planning, trying to put it in right now is going to be difficult. So it’s all of these things kind of coming together, and you find out if you were really prepared.
Rich Pierle:
And a good practice at the back end of this is, doing kind of a wrap up and review of, how did our BCP actually stack up against the experience and expectations? Did we have everything that we needed? And BCPs, you know, some organizations are our dusty documents, right? They’re things that, I haven’t looked at it in 10 years. And they should be living, breathing documents and things that are exercised at some frequency to make sure, because the world’s changing. And if you’re not keeping that fresh, you will need it someday and it won’t be where you need it to be to protect your company and to manage your risk.
Announcer:
This podcast is sponsored by Pier Digital Advisory Solutions, a boutique consultancy that supports companies on their journey from legacy technologies and business models to the realization of a digitally operating model. If you would like to learn more about Pier Digital and see notes from today’s show, visit www.pierdigital.com/podcast. Now back to the show with your host, Rich Pierle.
Rich Pierle:
When you’re in the middle of any emergency, whether it’s a system outage or whatever the event is, the first rule is, address the event. And so you’ve got leaders right now that are in the middle of moving resources, moving technologies. And so the primary focus right now for all organizations is through managing this event, whether you’re putting in some type of command center, again, every emergency or every event that I’ve been involved in, we started with a command center, right? Because it’s about communications, right? How do I make sure the CEO knows what’s going on? Down to the employee who’s taking calls in your call center. And that communications infrastructure is critically important. And so before we get into, how do I fix things going forward? And the post lame game that tends to happen, right? Take care of the emergency.
Rich Pierle:
I would urge all leaders and organizations, make sure that you’ve got your arms around this. And I can tell you, I’ve seen some organizations that I think are doing a pretty good job, at least to me. So I’m a big Marriott customer, and I spend a lot of my time in Marriotts. And so I needed to leave Michigan, which is where one of my current customers is pretty quickly. Tyler, the on staff manager was like, “Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.” And it was easy because clearly they’d gotten the message from their leadership. So another message come out today from the CEO and president. So, even though the hospitality industry’s going to definitely take a hit, they’re trying to do the right thing for their customers because they’re not playing this just for today. They’re playing this for the long-term relationship.
Rich Pierle:
And so how did you not just take a short-term focus on this? And how do you make sure that your customers and your associates know what the expectations are? Because that’s as much of this as anything, it’s how do you act during the emergency? Do you act with dignity? Do you act with a gravitas? Or are you running around with your head on fire? And so I think those organizations right now are the ones you want to watch, because I think when we get out of this and we will get out of this, those are the ones you want to be a part of and work with. So again, Marriott I think is doing a good job based on what I can see as a customer. I think everybody’s along that continuum based on how good their BCP is, how much pre-planning have they done? And others are racing to catch up.
Rich Pierle:
Coming together in a big organization starts with leadership. It starts with leadership. And when you see it kind of unraveling, that’s not the employee’s problem. That’s the leader’s problem. On the back end, evaluating effectiveness of your business continuity plan, doing some of the, what I would say, post incident response from a root cause standpoint. In IT root cause is part of everything that we do. And a lot of times companies want an objective third party who can come in and look at, what went right, what went wrong and what are the things that we should do differently from an IT, from a shared services standpoint?
Rich Pierle:
I would say the other part of it is, what are the things that we should have been thinking about that we weren’t? We talk a lot about digital labor and bots and things like that. This is a great opportunity, I think, for companies to look at potential investments in new technologies that may take some of the load off the existing staff, when you’re in a significant situation like that where some of your workforce is not necessarily focused on the work, they’re focused on themselves, which the reality is they need to be, because you want to make sure that they can continue to support the organization.
Rich Pierle:
Hey, everyone. Rich here again. To find more episodes of the Pier Digital podcast, go to pierdigital.com/podcast. You can also follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter @PierleRich. That’s spelled P-I-E-R-L-E, Rich, all one word. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a quick review for us on iTunes, which will help more business leaders discover our podcast. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.
