This blog is intended for leaders of businesses or organizations that have been impacted by the historic flooding in the Tennessee Midstate.  Today with daylight comes the growing realization of what lies ahead. I want to pass on to you how important it is for you to put these two things in place:  

1. Form a Team
2. Create a plan (if you don't already have one) and Work the Plan

I won't pass on to you the daunting percentages of businesses who close within two years if they are not able to get back to a "new normal" within the first week or two following a business interruption.  The following information will hopefully be helpful to you today as you establish command and control in the face of the rising water, increase collaboration and communication across your organization, and provide a framework for consistency at a time when you are not in the best frame of mind.

The Team:

No matter the size of your business, you need to form a team.  Call it an Initial Assessment Team or call it your Emergency Management Team.  Call it whatever but get it formed now.  The impact of the flood upon your business is more than what anyone can handle by themselves.  Determine what staff make up the back bone to your business operations and have them become a member of the team.  Based upon the complexity and size of your business, form a team of no more than 7 people who represent facilities, security, IT, HR, and mission critical activities that may be at risk.  For healthcare, this may be the person who serves as the manager of the clinic; for manufacturing, it may be your Production Manager. Consider adding others depending on the risks. For instance, if your business handles secure data, and your business is regulated, consider adding someone from the Security Committee.  If you are a very small business, consider involving "trusted advisers" who may be your lawyer or banker or someone outside your business who can add to your capacity to respond.

Address these immediate questions and issues:

 1. Conduct an initial assessment of the situation.  If you have an existing plan, review the criteria and escalation strategies of your plan.    Determine if you are going to activate or not.  Your assessment needs to address these concerns at a minimum:

• Are there any life safety issues today for our employees?
• What is the current status of the facility?
• What disruption of technology services are we facing?
• How does the event impact our customers?
• What is the business impact for the company in terms of mission critical activities, brand, and reputation?

2. Communication and Coordination. Determine how the team will work together. How will you connect and what communication tools will you use?  Will you work virtually, using a standing conference bridge, e-mails, tweets, or through a Wikki sight.  Or will you meet physically? If you meet physically pre-determine three locations where you will meet: inside your facility (if you have access); secondary location off-site; tertiary location.   Contact me if you have telecom and technology issues and I can connect you with resources I know who can address your needs. 

3.  Assign. Assign an individual who can take responsibility for convening the team, monitoring the action, and documenting the actions (this is helpful for a number of reasons from insurance and disaster claims to maintaining consistent communication).   This person is sometimes referred to as the Disaster Response Coordinator. This leads me to the importance of having and working a plan.

Create and Work a Plan:  Importance of an Incident Action Plan (IA).

Your team and other employees need to be guided by a plan.  Why have a plan? It will help you maintain command and control, enable greater collaboration and communication and consistency and will help you recover more quickly.   Your plan needs to have these three elements: communication of your status; articulation of the strategic objectives; and, the operational period.  The plan may be communicated orally or, ideally, written.  

Use these steps to build your company's Incident Action Plan:

1. Assess the incident situation. Report the current status of the event.
2. Establish strategic objectives.  Ensure the necessary resources are available to complete the tasks.  Use this sniff test of what makes a good objective:  it is feasible and practical; it is consistent with sound environmental practices; it observes safety norms; it has alternative strategies that could be employed.
3. Assign all objectives (to a team or to an individual).  For instance, "Harry who is head of Facilities will form a salvage team and conduct an assessment of the working order of all mission critical production equipment and will report back to us in two hours. Sandra of HR will activate an employee call down to determine well-being of employees and availability of employees to report to work and will report back in 2 hours.  Steve will determine telecom issues and will re-route main number and upload scripts containing current status of company on website.
4. Determine the operational period.  Based upon the severity of the impact you may determine to communicate every two hours or less.  Often within the first 24 hours following a business interruption, the operational period is every 2-4 hours.  Seventy two hours post impact, your operational period may be every 12 hours.
5. Communicate the plan to all identified stakeholders.  Write up a brief status, your strategic objectives, your suggested strategies and the assignments made, and the operational period.  Create a PDF file of your incident report and distribute it across your employee base to provide consistent information.  Consider sending the report out to your clients and partners as this can go a long way towards communicating confidence that  you are in control of the situation and can decrease the volume of well intended calls that may distract you from recovery efforts.

 I suggest to my clients that they establish their objectives and corresponding strategies in light of their "buckets" of work or business functions.  These main "buckets" are:  

• People (safety, critical staffing in place, employee assistance programs)
• Facilities (Damage assessment, Vendor contact)
• Technology (IT and Telecom needs)
• Mission Critical Activities of the Business (what workarounds can be instituted)
• Communication with all stakeholders
• Finance (if you use the Incident Command Structure)
• Security (in the case of companies who handle sensitive data)

If you would like to a copy of a template that I incorporate with my business continuity/disaster recovery planning, please contact me and I will be happy to provide it to you.  E-mail me at: jhilley@patmosconsulting.com.  I am here to be of help, having worked in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and have worked with a number of businesses in Middle TN.

If you know of a business owner who has been affected by this disaster, please forward this information.  By using this process, a business can have an accelerated recovery time, even gaining competitive advantage.    

My next blog will be communication issues during the recovery phase following a disaster.  I hope the operational period will be four hours if I don't get called in by a client.  Hang in there!