Step 11: Build and Maintain Teamwork

Communicate and Participate

The Organization BCM Coordinator should conduct communication at all levels. This is one of the strategies to build a winning team and should be done whenever possible.

Get out of your office and talk to people
Make contact
Use the experience of others
Develop a network of allies and know your opposition
Develop your credibility by giving supervisors and peers something they can use
Emphasize survivability and sustainability of organization and safety and continued employment of personnel
Understand the key to project management success:

- Choose the right people
- Encourage and manage them effectively

Recruit most qualified people
- Do not take a body to fill a position
Involve first-level management in the project and they will involve their staff
Facilitate and coordinate with Heads of Business Unit of the BCP team members who do not report to you
Motivate BCP team members to contribute their best
Do not over-supervise team progress
Set expectations of success
Resolve technical disagreements early
Facilitate team growth

- Form
- Storm
- Norm
- Perform
Live by ground rules set by the BCP team
Instill a sense of mission
Help team members see the big BCP picture

Organize Teams

The organization of the team is critical to ensuring teamwork.

Develop team organization and structure
Utilize the expertise of BCP team members
Define team objectives
Get the team to internalize the BC plan and make the plan it's own

Understand Organizational Structures

The Organization BCM Coordinator must learn to use both “formal” and “informal” organizational structures. This understanding is especially useful when there is a need to push for BCP support through informal means.

Share Business and Technical Expertise

The BCP project requires both business and technical expertise in so many different disciplines. There is a need to share knowledge amongst the BCP project team members as the Organization BCM Coordinator is simply out of his or her depth.

Facilitate Structured Brainstorming

During the BCP project, there is likely to be the need to hold frequent brainstorming sessions with BCP team members, to work out strategies and solutions to technical problems. Given the diversity of expertise on the BCP project, it is essential that the Organization BCM Coordinator facilitates these sessions in a structured fashion to ensure everyone's participation and understanding of relevant technical concepts. Do not allow individual members to take off on obscure technical directions that no one else can follow. Make them slow down and express their ideas in layman's terms so that everyone can participate in the discussion.

Translate Jargons and Slang into English

It may seem, at times, as if everyone on the team is speaking a different language. Each discipline has its own peculiar idiom and uses jargon that may be meaningless to uninitiated BCP team members. The Organization BCM Coordinator must be able to recognize when a BCP team member is spouting “Jargons and Slang”, and ensure that it is translated into the common language, presumably English. This translation process can serve, not only to improve understanding but also to help ensure the validity of the suggestions or arguments being presented

Issue Work Orders for Technical Tasks

Some technical people, when presented with a specific task, become absorbed in the fine details and lose sight of the original goal. As a result, a considerable amount of time may be spent on irrelevant, or even counterproductive, activities. It may be advisable, therefore, to issue written “work orders” for technical assignments, explicitly stating the objectives and parameters of the assignment. This approach is analogous to issuing a work order to a car mechanic, rather than giving him or her permission to fiddle under the hood indiscriminately.

Insist Upon Written Documentation

No BCP assignment should be considered complete until the results of that assignment have been documented in writing. While many BCP team members tend to dislike documentation, this requirement must be insisted upon for several reasons. It will:

Enable the Organization BCM Coordinator to verify successful completion of the task
Make it easier to communicate and measure the results to the other BCP team members
Ensure that the assignment has been thought through in sufficient detail to withstand scrutiny

Get Audit Involved

I am a strong advocate of communicating and involving the auditors throughout the BCP project. If each component of the BCP project can be audited and issues communicated to the Organization BCM Coordinator and BCP project team members during each phase, remedial actions can be taken without causing too much inconvenience to the participating business units.

While guidance may be provided by the Organization BCM Coordinator, the understanding by the audit personnel of the business areas will provide other perspectives to the completeness of the plan. Once the BC plan is implemented, the main benefit will be that they will conduct regular audits, having fully understood the BCM planning process, and ensure that the various areas of the organization maintain their familiarity with the detailed recovery procedures.

Is This Another BCP Project Attempt?

In most organizations that I joined or was engaged as an external consultant, previous attempts had once or twice been made at developing BCP projects themselves.

The common problem was that these previous attempts had been accompanied by a misunderstanding of the true goal of BC, a lack of Executive Management attention and support, or for no better reason than the auditor had insisted upon it. There were other reasons, of course, but the bottom line is that there had been a history of bad practices. So, the resistance against another attempt at BCP must be overcome before any real meaningful work can begin.

For a start, the BCP project tasks and activities can be assigned specific timeframes for completion. This will allow for the implementation of traditional project management techniques that will serve to track and report on BCP project tasks and activities progress, or the lack of it, so that appropriate corrective actions can be taken.

Project schedule and timing for each business unit‟s BCP effort, involving all or most major business units (anywhere from ten to thirty) should be broken down roughly as recommended in Figure 15.1 Project Schedule & Elapse Time and the detailed steps and activities can be found in Template 6: BCP Action Steps & Tasks.

The promise of rapid development of business unit continuity plans is often an attractive alternative. This promise in most organizations often appears to be a never-ending story, when planning efforts are delayed and stretched out too long.

Conclusion

It is unlikely that a given BCP project will encounter all the communication issues mentioned above. Nevertheless, communication during the BCP project should not be underestimated as it is the means for everyone to have a common understanding of the deliverables. Unfortunately, it is often hampered by the lack of time. There is no substitute for good communication with all levels but you will need to plan for it.

BCM Project Management Steps Click to find out more about the detailed requirement for each step
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Reference

Goh, M. H. (2021). Managing Your Business Continuity Planning Project. Business Continuity Management Planning Series (3rd ed.). Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from "Chapter 21: Step 11: Build and Maintain Teamwork"

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