As Storm Eowyn batters the north of the UK, I was remembering the impacts that I have seen of massive natural events. The images of the devastation from the tsunami in Japan around the Fukushima from the relief convoy that I was part of will stay with me forever. Likewise the key lessons I learned about resilience and disaster recovery planning as I discussed with my wife how her organisation was dealing with watching offices being eradicated in real time on the network monitoring panel. After she listened to her colleagues crying in fear when they were crouched under their desks as Tokyo was shaken by a massive earthquake. And then the challenges posed by moving their operations 1000km south to avoid any potential radiation risk from the damaged nuclear power plant.
The one key lesson: no prewritten plan is perfect but having one is better than not having anything. Having a structure to your thinking helps make sense of the chaos, allowing you to make better decisions under pressure.
That is the scenario that is facing organisations in the UK – literally in the north but also across the country for other reasons. Organisations that employ people are facing uncertainty from the changing regulatory environment on top of the recent changes to the tax rates. If they operate internationally, then there are real uncertainties in the political space – and particularly if you trade with the US in any meaningful way. In the UK, consumer confidence appears to be falling, the ICAEW’s recent survey shows that business confidence certainly is. All these changes mean that organisations are reluctant to hire new employees or replace the ones that leave.
The questions then become: how good do you think your plans are? Do they exist at all? How resilient do you think your organisation is? Can you do more with what you have got? Potentially, how could you do more with less?
These questions are blindingly obvious but very few people put the effort in to thinking about the answers before the burning platform gets really hot – and the crisis is upon you.
If this resonates, contact me: I am always happy to give a bit of time for free.