It’s all about the defense

“Crisis Management and Business Continuity – that’s a luxury service; only mega companies can afford spending time and efforts investing in such programs,” is a general statement often heard when discussing crisis and continuity topics.

This was also my opinion prior to joining Deloitte and working on business continuity projects for different environments. However, after dedicating 3 years of my career fully focused on business continuity and crisis management advisory from design, implementation, research and certifications, it became clear to me that being well prepared and organized to face chaotic situations is crucial for every entrepreneur, small business or multinational organization.

Similar to a football game, every goal scored and every competition won is due to an organized defensive back line driving the attack and running the game. Adopting this approach to your organization is akin to competing at the “market world cup finals”, having the whole world watching, cheering and judging. If that were the case wouldn’t you want to come out on top and win fans’ hearts as the team who planned every defensive line possible within its capabilities to overcome obstacles and redefine history?

This turnaround in the conversation always makes people think that no matter how small and limited resources are, understanding the business continuity concepts and being able to identify what are time critical operations that constitute the core activities of your business is possible, especially that recovery capabilities can be tailor-made to adequately fit within the predefined risk appetite.

Since we are living in a world full of surprises and success is never guaranteed, being able to demonstrate preparedness to face, react and contain worst-case scenario situations can be an advantage that can not only increase your fans trust but improve it to become more of a loyalty relationship. To conclude, only the ones who worked hard for many years and learned from every mistake were able to lift the world cup; others were just there for the tourism. Which side are you on?