Author’s note: This is the first part of a longer article that will become my presentation of the same title for WCDM 2013. It incorporates thoughts expressed in my articles “Is the BCM profession a dead-end?” in 2010, “BCI-DRJ alliance: this is ‘thought leadership?’” in 2011 and in “Why traditional approaches aren’t working”, my 2012 presentation to the Australian National Security College.

It is not yet fully developed, months before WCDM. In particular, I’m wondering if my analysis really does or not apply to both emergency management (EM) in the public sector and business continuity management (BCM) in the private sector. Your comments will help me refine my thinking. I’m happy to engage in a dialogue here or on the WCDM blog; I’ll be ready to defend myself in June in Toronto. Be sure to bring an ample supply of rotten tomatoes to my presentation…

Here’s Why I attend WCDM; I hope you will, too. This article is also available on the WCDM blog.

What’s wrong with contingency planning?

If your CEO asked you – a private-sector business continuity manager (BCM) – to list the major, long-term risks to your company, what risks would be on your list?

Or if an elected official asked you as a public-sector emergency manager (EM) to list the major long-term risks to your community, what risks would be on that list?  Read more... (2267 words, 0 images, estimated 9:04 mins reading time)

A one-day exploration of ways to turn risks in the next ten years into opportunities. (Get it? 2012 + 10 = 2022) Forbes Kay Parsons Charrette (FKPC) is an accelerated planning workshop focused specifically on how to get a return on your investment in organizational and community resilience planning.

The FKPC 2022 is an innovative approach to resilience organized by Nathaniel Forbes (Singapore), Robert Kay (Australia) and David Parsons (Australia). As far as we know, no one’s ever organized a charrette on resilience risks and opportunities before. What’s a charrette? It is “an intense period of design activity…organizing thoughts from experts and users in a structured medium that is unrestricted and conducive to creativity and the development of myriad scenarios:’ From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charrette

FKPC 2022 will be held on Sunday, 24 June 2012, at the Ontario Bar Association in downtown Toronto, Canada. Admission to FKPC 2022 is CAD $395.00, including lunch. Participation is limited to seventy-five (75) people selected from the public, private and non-governmental sectors.

Sunday, 24 June is the Sunday before the World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM).  Read more... (589 words, 2 images, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

A one-day workshop about turning risks into opportunities
with the theme “understanding future sources of human-induced disasters”
led by Nathaniel Forbes, Robert Kay and David Parsons

The Forbes Kay Parsons Charrette 2022 (FKPC) is a one-day exploration of ways to turn the risks of the next ten years into opportunities. (Get it? 2012 + 10 = 2022) FKPC  is an accelerated planning workshop focused specifically on how to get a return on your investment in organizational and community resilience planning.

The Forbes Kay Parsons Charrette 2022 is an innovative approach to resilience organized by Nathaniel Forbes (Singapore), Robert Kay (Australia) and David Parsons (Australia). As far as we know, no one’s ever organized a charrette on resilience risks and opportunities before.

What’s a charrette? It is “an intense period of design activity… organizing thoughts from experts and users in a structured medium that is unrestricted and conducive to creativity and the development of myriad scenarios.” From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charrette

FKPC 2022 will be held on Sunday, 24 June 2012, at the Ontario Bar Association in downtown Toronto, Canada. Admission to FKPC 2022 is CAD $395.00, including lunch.  Participation is limited to seventy-five (75) people selected from the public, private and non-governmental sectors.

Sunday, 24 June is the Sunday before the World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM).  Read more... (646 words, 1 image, estimated 2:35 mins reading time)

Everybody’s other favourite pastime: comparing salaries! The deadline is 31 December 2011 for recruiter BC Management’s Asia BCM compensation study. Click here to complete the survey. Results for 2010: 27% of BCM people in Asia get SGD 50K or less per year, 23% get up to SGD 100K and another 23% get up  to SGD150K. 75% of the SGD 50K or less were in India. View the chart for Asia Pacific. Hey, you do this for love, not money, right? When you complete the Asia BCM compensation study, you get a free copy. Pass it on to your HR department.

Everybody’s favourite pastime: comparing themselves with others! Complete the KPMG-Continuity Insights BCM Program Benchmarking survey and maybe win this Amazon Kindle Fire.

They say it takes twenty (20) minutes to complete; the deadline is 15 January 2012. To hear how your BCM program compares to everyone else’s, register for the Continuity Insights conference in Scottsdale, Arizona (USA) in April 2012. Or just read the May 2012 issue of Continuity Insights magazine. Here are the 2007 KPMG-CI Benchmarking Survey results, for comparison.

Published in the Singapore Business Review, 5 December 2011 http://bit.ly/vIPCg0

I believe Singapore will eventually experience a severe earthquake. I’m not a pessimist; I’m a realist. You can’t live 400 hundred kilometers from a major earthquake fault and say there is no risk of earthquake.

The kitchen drawers in my 23rd floor Singapore home rolled open by themselves in the “tremor” from Sumatra in February 2008. That was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. What happens after one that’s 8.0? Or 9.0, like Fukushima?

You understand that 9.0 is one hundred times stronger than 7.0, right?

As an organizational resilience professional, I imagine these consequences in Singapore:
• Civil Defense focused on high-priority locations. Ambulances simply unavailable
• Damaged office towers too risky to re-enter, and BCA inspectors overwhelmed
• Hundreds of employees and customers injured by falling glass
• Broken telecom lines and jammed mobile circuits
• Collapsed or buried segments of MRT track, and impassable road surfaces
• Damaged water, sewer and electric power lines
• Thousands of people trying to acquire drinking water
• Toilets that flush once but don’t refill
• Panic cash withdrawals from ATMs, only some of which will be functioning  Read more... (673 words, 1 image, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

So this is what passes for thought leadership in business continuity management (BCM) these days.

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI), a U.K. professional association with global ambitions and under-exploited footholds in the growth markets of Asia, Middle East and South America, goes looking for a partner in North America. After thoughtful deliberation about the future of BCM in the 21^st century, and with all the time in the world to make a choice, they select…the Disaster Recovery Journal (DRJ), a 24-year old, American, family-owned magazine publisher and conference producer that must be the only BCM business in the world still calling it “disaster recovery,” the most-resented term in BCM profession.

BCI’s announcement says the alliance “aims to align thought leadership between [the] two organizations,” while DRJ’s press release says the alliance will “broaden and deepen discussions in…business continuity and related professions.”

That “thought leadership” bit caught my eye. When I first skimmed the headline, I mistakenly thought the BCI and the American professional association formerly-known-as the Disaster Recovery Institute International – DRII – had finally decided to stop pissing on each other’s shoes. Now, that would be news.  Read more... (2676 words, 2 images, estimated 10:42 mins reading time)

Rise up and rebel against the presenters who oppress you! Join the Anti-PowerPoint Party, a grass-roots global movement dreamed up by Swiss software engineer and author Matthias Poehm. Be sure to check out his “Horror slide of the month”! You can “Like” the APPP Party on Facebook, too.

Columnist Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times wrote about the APPP in her column, “Anti-PowerPoint revolutionaries unite”. (The FT makes you register to read their stuff, but it is free.) She was brave to admit publicly she’d been “gang raped by PowerPoint slides more times than I can count.” I can’t wait for her podcast of that one.

Joining the APPP is free. And very much tongue-in-cheek. I joined. I’d send money, too, but it’s not quite clear how it would be used. Matthias is flogging his book, The PowerPoint Fallacy, for SGD 29.00 if you join the APPP, SGD 46.00 if you don’t. His marketing strategy is positively a work of genius, in my view, because so many bad presentations waste so many people’s time, all over the world.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a Civil War cemetery in three minutes and just 268 words – and no slides – in his famous Gettysburg Address. 150 years later, American school children can still recite it from memory (I learned it in the 4th grade). Here’s Google’s Director of Research Peter Norvig‘s satirical version of that Gettysburg Address  as a Powerpoint presentation. Point: bad slides detract from good content.  Read more... (375 words, 1 image, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

1. In 2010, 80% of the students who had Nathaniel as their instructor passed the exam on their first try. To help you pass, too, Nathaniel offers a ‘No One Left Behind’ Guarantee.  Watch the video to hear his guarantee.
2. Nathaniel packs the course with photos and case studies from his 15 years of BCM experience in Asia. You get ‘real world’ examples and sample documents you can use right away, plus the BCI’s universally-recognized theory that helps you pass the exam.
3. Nathaniel teaches the course in only three (3) days instead of the usual five (5) days, saving you time and money.
4. No other BCM certificate has the global stature and recognition of The BCI’s ABCI/CBCI/MBCI/FBCI certification hierarchy. Read what Nathaniel has written about ‘sub-prime’ BCM certifications.
5. You get Nathaniel as your instructor, an American with 15 years of on-the-ground BCM experience in Asia, not an inexperienced substitute teacher. Read some of the testimonials from his past students about Nathaniel.

It’s easy to register. Contact Chris Tan at chris.tan@calamity.com.sg, send an SMS text message to +65 9688-5000, or call +65 6324-3091 during business hours in Singapore.

Plus 5 MORE good reasons to take this course in Singapore, Tropical Paradise of Southeast Asia!  Read more... (410 words, 2 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Do you know this woman?
At which Singapore BCM professional’s wedding was this picture taken?
And when was it (month and year)?

She’s been in BCM since 1998 (I think). She works in BCM at a European investment bank now. She has three kids. She’s one of my favorite people. Her husband kicked my butt in squash.

Send your best guess to Chris Tan at chris.tan@calamity.com.sg. I’ll buy lunch for the first person with the correct answer (unless you’re the person in this photo!). Lunch could very well be at Ji Ji Wanton Noodle Specialist. Hmmm: is it possible to be “certified” in noodle management? We’ll discuss it over lunch. Yaaaaaaaaam sing!