Emergency Response and Business Continuity must be part of your new employee orientation process. If this is not the case in your organization it would be a very very big win for you to partner with HR, Safety, Security and Learning & Development to help all new employees be better prepared. TipRead More
Developing a real-time understanding of every facet of a resilience program is a passion of mine! In this post I will share some ideas on the value it has provided in empowering me to do real-time assessment analysis with minimal manual effort. A major goal of this post is to getRead More
Interchangeable (Mix-and-Match) Work Area Recovery Exercise! VALUE * VALUE * VALUE If you have never done a work area recovery exercise, you are in for a treat. If you have had the good fortune of doing them, you already realize why I am so excited about this post. Let’s examine someRead More
All departments must have representation at tabletop exercises. The process owner / alternate process owner or both must attend. Position the sign-in sheet near the doorway so people see it as they arrive and you greet them. Before the exercise begins ask if everyone has signed-in so they will getRead More
Whenever I host a tabletop exercise I provide a handy-dandy checklist to all participants. It is a valuable take-away. It helps guide them when reviewing their plan for completeness and finding gaps. It is also a starting point for readiness discussions with their team members. I hope you enjoy the list.Read More
If you have not yet created an invitation, this one may give you some ideas. You can use it as-is or customize it to meet your needs. I vary tabletop invitations to fit the situation. Below is one of the invitations I find useful and well accepted by participants. YouRead More
Hosting tabletop exercises is one of my favorite activities. I suppose that is a good thing, as I have hosted 200+ tabletops during my career. Tabletops have so many valuable aspects. They are a low stress way to test your current plans, identify gaps and improve your ability to respond.Read More
ALL plans must be tested on a regular basis! Tip – Process owners should bring their plans to tabletops and workstation area recovery exercises. They should use them as-is during the exercise. Tip – Plans and strategies must be validated. Our goal is to identify gaps preventing the plan fromRead More
All Plans, Critical Systems, Recovery Strategies, Cyber and Call Trees / Mass Notification Call Lists must be tested and reviewed on a schedule that aligns to your policies and requirements. Testing must validate your plans and systems and improve the resilience of your organization. In sports, smart athletes ‘practice withRead More
I always keep my antennas up for new ways I can improve business resilience / continuity. Sometimes I come up with ideas that utilize manual improvements but more often than not, my ideas involve technological solutions. The idea we will discuss in this post came to me in a really round-about way. HereRead More