Great Plan; but will they follow it in an incident? Improving Resilience

Great Plan; but will they follow it in an incident?

Improving Resilience 

Who is this?

• Optimist: “Lucky”• Pessimist: “Unlucky”• BC Manager: “The trains were working?”

Answer:Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Will they follow the plan?

• ‘Planning’ vs. ‘The Plan’ vs. Incident Readiness• Participation• Engagement• Plan Access and Plan Format• Exercising• Incident Systems

Participation: Attendance

~ 40 % of people turn up• Plan for it!• Cross-training is only partially effective– Remote– Resources, access / authority, vital records– Volumes– Supervision, exception management

• Work rotation might be better

Participation: Capability

• 50% of people are below average!– “About 10% to 15% remain calm and act quickly and efficiently.  Another 15% or less completely freak out--weeping, screaming or otherwise hindering the evacuation... The vast majority of people do very little. They are ‘stunned and bewildered’.” Psychologist John Leach in a 2004 article published in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine.’ (Ripley, 2005: 60)

• Incident response team members– Selection and training

• Heroes don’t exist• Exercise, exercise, exercise...

Engagement

• Don’t separate Planning from the business who will need to be involved

• Very simple planning tools: • Must be lowest path of resistance

• Compare with the ownership of SOx attestation• Who will take charge in an incident, not whom

they appoint in peacetime• Can we establish real ‘ownership’?

Plan Access and Plan Format

• It better be mobile! It’s 2015 for goodness sake.

• Plan Format– Less is more– Distil down to simple checklists:

Plan Access and Plan Format

• Everything can be a checklist– Less is more– Not too prescriptive• A few essential points, plus general considerations only• Better to be approximately right, than precisely wrong!

Exercising

• Not just a compliance requirement!• The best learning tool• Observation and Analysis– Not Pass vs. Fail– Create corrective action plan

• Only works if the plan is ‘exercisable’• Learning for non-time-critical roles too

Incident Management Systems

• The battle plan doesn’t survive contact with the enemy

• Not a NASA command center– 50% people are below average. Add to that the

impediments of disabilities, language, pressure• Leverage your planning efforts– Provided they are simple!

• No new moves

Conclusion:

• Don’t plan to plan• Low attendance and capability– More cross-training / role rotation

• Engagement -> Ownership• Everything can be a checklist• Better to be approx right that precisely wrong• 50% of people are below average (+ impediments)• Exercise more realistically, and involve the non-

time-critical roles• I.M. : no new moves

Questions?

Roland JohnsonPhone: (917) 583-0286 roland.johnson@clearview-continuity.com www.clearview-continuity.com