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.

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)

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)

Updated: August 4, 2011 @ 15:30

What’s the future career path for today’s BCM professional? I’ve plodded along a BCM career path for 14 years, and I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. All I see is more tunnel.

Here’s a simplified job description for a BCM Manager in a multinational company in Asia, and maybe where you live, too:

1. Get lukewarm to tepid management support
2. Struggle for modest funding in good times, grovel for derisory funding in bad times
3. Perform a risk assessment (optional in many companies)
4. Lead reluctant business units through a business impact analysis (BIA)
5. Develop continuity strategies that don’t cost anything to implement
6. Write plans in a template, removing any opportunity for creativity
7. Set up (and maintain) a recovery site
8. Exercise, often without any element of surprise
9. Repeat endlessly.

Did I miss anything?

I’m not making a judgment about the value of BCM or BCM professionals. I am one. I’m making a judgment about the long-term prospects in our profession for the vast majority of practitioners today. I know several regional, national or international BCM directors who get to travel, manage the work of others, make presentations at industry conferences, give interviews to reporters. But I hope they’ll be happy doing the same thing in 2020, because I just can’t see many of them moving up the corporate org chart. There may be exceptions, but I think they only prove the rule.  Read more... (3923 words, 1 image, estimated 15:42 mins reading time)

It can be tough to justify the value of a BCP job these days. The biggest threat most professionals worry about these days is unemployment: our own. Here are three ideas to mitigate that risk that will increase a BCP manager’s value to an organization.

• Cut something. Chop down your emergency notification call “tree”. The objective is to free up BCP professionals for more valuable work. The call “tree” has been a standard emergency notification strategy since mobile phones were invented: in an emergency, one person calls someone, who calls someone else, who calls someone else. Maintaining a call tree is like maintaining a real tree: it takes time to prune dead branches and to grow new ones. The maintenance effort is tedious and menial, and its results are hard to see. People forget their lists or have out-of-date numbers. Mobile phone lines are always jammed after an incident. Notifying everyone takes far too long.

Some large companies automate the notification process with an emergency notification system (ENS) that broadcasts text or email messages to large numbers of people simultaneously. That’s a good strategy if you have the budget for it, but the last time I checked, none of the name-brand providers — RapidReach, Everbridge (formerly 3n), MessageOne, MIR3, Varolii – has a message switch in Asia yet, so calls launched from Singapore to Hong Kong, for example, on a web-based notification service are routed through North America or Europe. You should hope that one of the vendors will discover the business opportunity in Asia some time soon.  Read more... (1405 words, 0 images, estimated 5:37 mins reading time)

What does it really mean for an individual to be “certified” in business continuity?

Like the euphemism “sub-prime”, the word “certified” is losing its meaning in Asia as the number and variety of BCM certifications and their purveyors grow like vines in the jungle. Attend a course, get the certificate and poof! You’re certified!

In Asia, for example, you can become certified by the BCM Institute as a Business Continuity Certified Professional (BCCP) with no prior BCM experience if you fork out US 840, spend one day in a class and another half day answering fifty questions on a test. You do not have to answer all of them correctly. That’s a fast-track bargain by any standard. The BCMI offers plenty more certifications, too.

Or you can become certified by The International Consortium for Organizational Resilience (ICOR) in Asia as a Certified Crisis Team Leader in three days for US 2,200. Or you can become a Certified Media Spokesperson for 800 bucks – in just nine hours (no examination required). I say, bring on the Exxon Valdez disaster: your spokesman is ready.

Long on ambition but short of time? You can be certified as both a Crisis Management AND Communications Professional (CMCP) in as few as four days. It costs US$3,700, but, hey, you only have to get a ‘C’ grade (75 percent) on the exam. You must also list two years of experience, but doing what?  Read more... (2623 words, 0 images, estimated 10:30 mins reading time)

The Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) has appointed a new representative in Singapore, operating under the name “DRI Singapore.” The representative, CCS Enterprise (S) Private Limited, also operates Strohl Systems Singapore for the American BCP software company Strohl Systems (now Sungard Availability Services) Note: Sungard advertises on our web site.

After a nasty break-up six months ago (read this bizarre press release from DRII) with its former Asia regional representative DRI Asia Pte Ltd., DRII decided to appoint separate representatives in each country. DRII has a representative in China and recently also appointed a representative in Malaysia.

New DRII representatives in Asia face an uphill climb, and here’s why:

They must try to rehabilitate DRII’s tarnished reputation in Asia with limited marketing budgets, and without the benefit of DRI Asia’s mailing list, which is now being used to promote a competing, Asian BCP certification program from the BCM Institute.They each have smaller target markets than DRI Asia did. Asia (including India, China and Japan) has 3.7 billion people. Singapore, however, has roughly the population of Alabama (population 4.5 million).

Malaysia has the population of Texas (population 23 million), but no effective requirements for companies to prepare and test business continuity plans, and therefore little demand for trained BCP professionals.  Read more... (543 words, 1 image, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)