Enterprise Resilience: Compete or Die...

Enterprise Resilience is the road to competitiveness. It is the global answer to many of the Chief Security Officers (CSO) who have faced the troublesome battle of selling more "Fear and Doubt" to the Board of Directors.

When Deborah Wince-Smith stood up on the stage at the 21st Annual Security Briefing at OSAC November 16th, 2006, her words were music to our ears:

“It is undeniable that the world has gotten more risky. Businesses now function in a global economy characterized by increasing uncertainty, complexity, connectivity and speed. Managing this rapidly changing risk landscape is an emerging competitiveness challenge—a challenge that demands resilience: the capability to survive, adapt, evolve and grow in the face of change.”

“Globalization, technological complexity, interdependence, and speed are fundamentally changing the kind of risks and competitive challenges that companies— and countries—face.”

“Failure, whether by attack or accident, can spread quickly and cascade across networks, borders and societies. Increasingly, disruptions can come from unforeseen directions with unanticipated effects.”

“Global information and transportation networks create interdependencies that magnify the impact of individual incidents. These types of risk demand new methods of risk management.”

Thinking back to those days, was this a way for the Chief Security Officers (CSO) of the Fortune 500 to finally shift their thinking from just security protection to something less macho?

How could "Resilience" become a platform for a mind set shift to justify new funding?

"After all, now we aren't trying to scare people into the low probability high impact incidents anymore and are focusing in on the high probability incidents, that may have enough impact to cause a significant business disruption."

What are the incidents and areas of risk that insurance won't touch these days?

If the insurance companies can write the policy to give you peace of mind, then is this necessarily an area that you can ignore because you have transferred the risk to someone else? Maybe not.

Being agile, ready and capable of a quick recovery is what competitiveness is all about, on the field, on stage or around the table in the Board Room.

Working towards control and protection while fear builds in the back of your mind makes you stiff, depletes your energy and creates doubt.

And when you are operating a business or standing on the tee of your first sudden death hole on any PGA weekend, you better have resilience.

The business equivalent to homeland security and critical infrastructure protection is Operational Risk Management (ORM)—a domain that many executives see as the most important emerging area of risk for their firms. Increasingly, failure to plan for operational resilience can have “bet the firm” results.

We all know that it costs lot's of money to have any systems downtime, that's why so many dollars have been invested in Disaster Recovery (DRP) and other Business Continuity Planning (BCP). Delta?

Yet is this the kind of resilience that is going to make you more competitive to seize more opportunities? The economics of resilience are more than investing for the likely or unlikely information systems incident that will attack your organization tomorrow.

The threat of “Tort Liability” and the loss of reputation remains top of mind these days with every major global company executive.

The threat is real and increasing at a faster rate than many other real operational risks to the enterprise.

Litigation from regulators, class actions and competitors has given the term Legal Risk new emphasis and meaning.

Once corporate management understands the need for a "resilience" mentality in place of a "protection" mental state, a new perspective is found.

Investing in the vitality, agility and competitive capabilities of the organization sounds and is more positive.

It alleviates the fear of doom and gloom and inspires new found innovation.

The future of your organizations longevity and in it's adaptability can be achieved with a new perspective. Compete or die.

Enabling Global Enterprise Business Resilience is just the beginning...

Operational Risk: People, Process, Systems & External Events…

When was the last time your team presented their plan to execute your next major milestone in your important project?

As you lean back in your chair and hear the “What”, “Why”, “Where”, “How” in the bullets and pictures on each of their presentation slides, you might be pleased with what you see.

Now, what is the alternative plan for this particular operation? Just in case.

The more you experience change and the real setbacks of your intended goals, achievements or anticipated outcomes, the realization occurs that you will need a “Plan B”.

You know, a back-up plan. Perhaps you even may need a fail-safe:

fail-safe

adjective

1: incorporating some feature for automatically counteracting the effect of an anticipated possible source of failure.

What is your universal unlock code? What is your alternative plan? How will you ensure the safety, security and service of your intended game plan today?

Unfortunately in business and in any other highly engineered or sophisticated operation that is vital to your growth and success, you will need to create an alternative plan.

Operational risk is defined as the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed processes, people, and systems or from external events. These risks are further defined as follows:

* Process risk – breakdown in established processes, failure to follow processes or inadequate process mapping within business lines.

* People risk – management failure, organizational structure or other human failures, which may be exacerbated by poor training, inadequate controls, poor staffing resources, or other factors.

* Systems risk – disruption and outright system failures in both internal and outsourced operations.

* External event risk – natural disasters, terrorism, and vandalism.

The definition includes Legal risk, which is the risk of loss resulting from failure to comply with laws as well as prudent ethical standards and contractual obligations. It also includes the exposure to litigation from all aspects of an institution’s activities.

How will you ensure the safety, security and service of your intended game plan today?

The teams who incorporate comprehensive Operational Risk Management (ORM) into each daily process, shall achieve their goals and will outperform the competition…

Breakpoint: Mastering the Future...

In the early days of any startup business, be prepared. You as an innovator, entrepreneur, or just plain engineer, designer and project manager know what being prepared means.

Or do you?

The pace of change, communications and human emotions reach their extremes in the early stages of most business growth.

Are you ready and prepared to deal with the amount of new challenges you shall now face as each day unfolds before you?

Before you understood what starting and running a new business is really all about, you may have thought for a moment how exciting it would be.

Then one day it begins to dawn on your colleagues, your investors and your potential customers that this idea has some flaws.

The business marketplace you have chosen has not yet arrived at what the real problem-set is, that your particular solution truly solves.

Or is it something else?

You see, it all comes back to the pace of change and the ability for some people to master the new skills, the new vision or the new outcomes unfolding before you.

The more rapidly you and your startup team accelerate upwards and forward to achieve that breakpoint, the sooner you will hit that next part of your own particular growth curve:

Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future Today

“Assists in predicting and mastering industrial, social, political, and personal change by tracking the pattern of major "breakpoints" in human history and revealing the great truths hidden in them”

As you now stare at the gallery of people on your next “Teams” or “Zoom” session, remember that you are on a real mission together.

After you understand that running a new business involves a tremendous amount of time and resources to get people to perform the way you imagined they would, this is when the breakpoint in your “S” curve takes place.

Are you there yet?

When you and your team start exploring the changes around your startup hypothesis then you are now utilizing the new data, the new feedback and the new human factors into your future achievement.

Keep your chin up.

Now that you have changed your design/prototype, changed your people, changed your market analysis and even changed your purpose for existence, you are mastering your future success…

Godspeed!