Business Zen: Painless to plan for the worst

Russell Bell

MONDAY morning started early, 12.03am to be precise. The house shaking and rolling, like a plane in turbulence. We were joined by our daughter and the shaking continued growing stronger.

My bleary-eyed puzzlement was replaced by expletives asking "When is this going to stop?" Mrs Bell found time during the quake to compare the experience to her being caught in the Darfield quake of 2010, while I stretched my memory to find a comparison, of which there was none.

All the while, Junior Bell slept peacefully while his action figures were falling around him. That boy can sleep through anything.

As I write this, the office is swaying as if bobbing on a lake. One of the crew here stated that Lake Taupo is heating up and reports from our Taumarunui office tell of, incredibly, strong reception of the same quakes from more than 500km away.

There is nothing to unite a community quite like a natural event. And the power of social media came to the fore -- only radio could match the speed with which information about the quake could be accessed.

However, the accuracy of many reports on Twitter and Facebook were dubious. Yesterday, there were some on Facebook pointing to the "supermoon" as the culprit (which has about as much validity as revivalist Christians hailing Donald Trump as a messenger from God -- it's true, they are out there).

Some time ago, I wrote about the need for business continuity/disaster recovery planning in the case of natural events such as the ones which befell us Monday morning. Given our own seismic history, we need to be prepared -- personally and professionally. Although an event impacting you and your business can come in many forms, we need to be ready if we are forced to change course.

For Kaikoura (a favourite place of mine), the emotion of the current events will eventually clear and attention will turn to the rebuild and the recovery of the wider community and the economy.

Two deaths at the time of writing are two too many, however, it is fortunate that this event occurred at midnight rather than midday.

In speaking with locals and business leaders yesterday, a number of disruptions in Wellington and the South Island were demanding contingency planning. Some contingencies were determined on the fly and others documented in disaster recovery plans. I recall at a dinner that the topic of Christchurch came up and I heard a remark, "we are all experts in business recovery now -- nothing like a disaster to get you focused". This is true, but how many of us can say hand on heart, "I have a tested and functional recovery plan"?

It shouldn't take a negative event to get you thinking about securing your business' future via continuity strategies. This is a specialist area which is too often overlooked. Should a major event happen in Whanganui or even in the Manawatu, you might be unable to access your staff, buildings and client information or you may lose it entirely.

We recently completed a business continuity plan for a client and the comments we received, when we handed it over, were two-fold -- "thanks for thinking of things that we hadn't thought of" and "that was painless". Having the plan will go a long way to ensuring that future events are as "painless" as possible.

�If you would like help with business continuity planning or for more information on strategic planning, phone Russell on 021 244 2421.