September 2007 Archives
In every book I read regarding business continuity planning, they always mention that the corporate culture needs to change to embrace business continuity planning in their day-to-day work environment. It makes perfect sense why this is necessary, however, it is also the most difficult thing to do.
There are many reasons why changing a culture is difficult to do, even when people know the change is the right thing to do. We need to move away from the cultural barriers we have created. We must remove the fear and distrust we all have for each other, move forward from holding onto the past and refrain from playing the blame game.
To change the culture across a University requires leaders in all levels of management and staff to make business continuity planning a priority. Communication across university departments is extremely critical, which means politics and past negative relationships need to be set aside for the good of the University as whole. It is easy to forget why we come to work every day because we get caught up working only in our silos. At Penn State, we need to keep the Penn State's mission in mind. Our mission is to improve people's lives through teaching, research and service.
In order to successfully embed business continuity planning into the culture, you need to make sure these pieces are in place:
1. Executive-level management MUST believe business continuity planning is critical. The University should continue providing critical functions in the event of an outage. Adjustments would be made on recovery efforts based on the severity of the event.
2. Policies and procedures for business continuity planning MUST be in place for departments to follow. There must be standards for recovery plans to ensure compatibility with other unit's plans or communications and dependencies across organizations will not work together during an event.
3. Awareness of high-level business continuity plans for the University should be shared with all employees including stakeholders (students, parents, etc). Details do not need to be shared, but an overall understanding of how the University will continue operations is critical for building TRUST and CONFIDENCE. Employees will feel the importance of building their own plan for their own business unit's critical services and contributing to something on a larger scale.
4. Show full support that business continuity planning is a University-wide responsibility across all departments and NOT just an IT function. IT may support business services, but these critical services need to plan for work around procedures.
5. The University needs to believe that business continuity is NOT a project, but an on-going process that requires everyone to play a part in. The success of business continuity planning rests with the leaders of the University.
