“Before anything, preparation is the key to success” ~ Alexander Graham Bell
Do you have a catastrophe plan?
2020 has brought enough 1st time challenges for everyone. There are no experts in what everyone has faced. It’s all trial and error. Pivoting daily!
At a recent conference TD Jakes talked about being pivotal leaders. Catastrophes don’t always give you notice. Things can change in a hurry. I have always been a believer in a plan B in case A goes south, but it’s not a bad idea to start working with a plan C, & D. With leaders, failure is not an option, and preparation is a key!
One of the hardest things in all of my years of business happened recently. A young employee (43) became sick and passed away suddenly. This employee held a key position in our organization. In addition to the loss of a friend, and the sadness throughout the entire company, we had to immediately fill the position to keep working. We had many things in place, but you can never be too prepared. I hope you never have to go through something like that, but you need to be prepared.
It is all around us, hurricanes, tornados, fires, earthquakes, sudden death, and the departure of a key employee, and of course Covid. Even retirement can throw off a company’s workflow. The time to prepare for these things is before they happen.
Is it easy?…No
Is it worth it…Yes
DOUBLE CHECK YOUR DATA BACK UP!!! I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that people thought they had adequate back up and did not. Not long ago our CRM had a hack at the corporate level, we got shut down instantly. All of our information, sales, install, shut down. We had to function on memory and notes. Get a plan in order for a copy of daily information to be saved for this type of catastrophe. We also had a fire at a location and all of the backups in the safe melted, this was before off sight backup. Guess who didn’t call us? Anyone who owed us money.
Insurance, do you have interrupted business insurance? Where will your company operate if your location is not accessible or gone? (I’ve been through two fires)
Prepare: You need a backup plan for each position.
Could someone take your SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for each position, sit down, look at it and do that job? If the answer to that question isn’t YES, then you have some work to do.
If you don’t have the time to do it now, will you have the time to do it when the person doing the position is no longer available?
This will get you started!
- Make sure you have a SOP for each position. If you don’t have one, have each person in each position write down every duty and process they do, know, and use to complete job tasks. I have some examples if anyone wants to look at one.
- Collect all passwords for devices used.
- Contacts for each position i.e. suppliers used, contacts with vendors.
- Someone to step into the position in the event of a tragedy or sudden departure. Cross train each position.
I hope you never get tested on these catastrophes, but doing these things will help the sting a little.