It’s 2018 and we’re back with our first episode of the new year.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through Bryghtpath’s view of the Top 12 Global Risks of 2018. Topics discussed include national security, the global economy, lessons learned from the 2017 hurricane season, cybersecurity, and risk to companies from the ongoing sexual harassment revelations.

 

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:            It’s 2018.

Jen Otremba:               2018, Happy New Year.

Bryan Strawser:            Happy New Year. Welcome back to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast.

Jen Otremba:               We’re excited to be back in the New Year here.

Bryan Strawser:            We are. We actually didn’t record any podcasts for the last three weeks of the year. I think we recorded four or five like that first of December and we used those throughout the months. So this is really our first time back in the studio here at our offices for a month or so.

Jen Otremba:               It’s good. Much like many, it gave us chance to enjoy the holidays.

Bryan Strawser:            It did. So in this episode we’re gonna talk about our view of the top risks of 2018. I think we’re gonna kind of run the gamut here from things that many of you are probably thinking about. Some things that we’ve talked about before and then some things that maybe you’re not thinking about that are gonna have an impact on you in some way, in terms of the global economy. Because that does impact you locally or foreign affairs and national security issues, which will also impact you in ways that you’re probably not thinking about today.

Bryan Strawser:            So the first risk on our list of 12 risks that we’re gonna talk about today is the rise of China and I think we hear a lot about this. I don’t think people really understand the impact of what’s going on but under the current leadership, China’s really taken a different approach to geopolitical affairs and international relations than they have before. And what we’re seeing now with China is really they appear to have started to cooperate with a number of international institutions where and before they really kind of set themselves aside and didn’t do any sort of cooperation like this.

Jen Otremba:               Yeah, they really isolated themselves as far as international trade, discussions, things like that.

Bryan Strawser:            And what’s interesting about that is, that was really a role the United States has played historically. We are beginning to do less of that. China is beginning to fill somewhat of the vacuum or void left behind by our leadership. It’s not really a Republican or Democrat thing, it’s just that the direction that our country has gone over the last decade or so has been a different role Internationally. So China is starting to fill that gap and it’s an interesting comparison I think to think about the rise of China and what many perceive to be the decline of the United States as a geopolitical power for the last 20 – 30 years.

Is very similar to the situation that the United Kingdom found themselves in, in the late 1800’s where they made the strategic choice to hitch themselves through a surging United States as a global power and it has allowed the United Kingdom to bat above their weight in foreign affairs for well over a century. And perhaps we have similar opportunity to coach and guide the Chinese in the same way, but I’m not sure that our current administration or even previous administration is interested in doing that.

In last week’s episode, we discussed the traditional approach to the Business Impact Analysis (BIA), a part of the Business Continuity Lifecycle. This week, we’re going to talk about the trend towards not doing the BIA at all.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through the recent trend of not completing a more traditional business impact analysis, or BIA, process as a part of an organization’s annual business continuity lifecycle. Topics discussed include why organizations are choosing not to complete a BIA, alternate processes that allow an organization to gain much of the needed information through other means, and thoughts on where this trend will continue to evolve.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   To BIA or not. That is the question.

Jen Otremba:                        That’s right. So last week, we talked about the BIA.

Bryan Strawser:                   We did. We talked about the traditional BIA.

Jen Otremba:                        The business impact analysis. Yep.

Bryan Strawser:                   And this week we’re gonna talk about not doing the BIA. Alternate ideas around the BIA. Or justification for not doing the BIA. Of course, I’m stealing from Shakespeare’s Hamlet …

Jen Otremba:                        All day long.

Bryan Strawser:                   All day long …

Jen Otremba:                        That’s right.

Bryan Strawser:                   I’ve been quoting Shakespeare. Not really. But when we do the traditional BIA, we expect to get certain outcomes. And those outcomes are understanding activities that support products and services at the company, understanding the impact over time of those activities not happening, or how we can measure the impact of a disruption to your critical processes, or …

Jen Otremba:                        Financial impacts.

Bryan Strawser:                   Yeah, we’re capturing all kind, and again, not just financial.

Jen Otremba:                        Right, absolutely.

Bryan Strawser:                   We’re capturing all kinds of impacts, reputational, community, brand, regulatory, et cetera.

Jen Otremba:                        Yes.

Bryan Strawser:                   We’re setting prioritized time frames for resuming these activities, in some kind of organized manner of what’s important first, and et cetera, and we’re identifying dependencies, and those might be suppliers, or technologies, or other relevant interested parties.

All important, but there’s a growing belief that, perhaps, doing this in-depth BIA on an annual or bi-annual basis, or every two years, or what have you, is not important more. Why is that?

Jen Otremba:                        Well, I think, in some aspects, they’re not necessarily making the argument that it’s not important, but that the expense of doing it, or the time it takes to do it, it is very time-consuming process, is unnecessary, is maybe the argument, and that their time can be spent better elsewhere.

Bryan Strawser:                   Agreed. We’re also seeing the argument that, really, things are either critical, or not. If they’re critical, they should be recovered as quickly as possible, and things that are not critical, we’re just not gonna worry about anymore. That’s one theory.

Another theory, that … this one actually makes more sense to me, is … when you’re in the crisis, your executives are calling the shots. And your executives know, very quickly, which services are mission critical,

We’re often asked about the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) process, a part of the Business Continuity lifecycle, and how that should be structured within an organization.

Over the next two episodes, we’ll take a look at the BIA, starting with the traditional business impact analysis process, followed by a look next week at the trend towards not doing the BIA at all.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through the traditional business impact analysis process. Topics discussed include how to structure the BIA process, how to use the results, connections to the ISO 22301 and 22317 standards, and some of our lessons learned from conducting the BIA at multiple clients over the years.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   We’re going to put on our business continuity and disaster recovery hat today and talk about, I think a two-part podcast is what we’re talking about here. We’re going to start by talking about the traditional idea of the business impact analysis. What is the BIA, Jen?

Jen Otremba:                        That’s a good question. The BIA, or the Business Impact Analysis, to me it’s sort of just a process to help determine critical functions within a company and what the relationship is with each other, in Jen’s words.

Bryan Strawser:                   That’s a good plain English description of the BIA.

Jen Otremba:                        In Jen words, not the ISO definition, the Jen definition.

Bryan Strawser:                   ISO says in the 22301 standard that the business impact analysis is a formal end document and evaluation process for determining continuity and recovery priorities, objectives and targets.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, what I said.

Bryan Strawser:                   It goes on to say that this is really about understanding the organization and its context and the needs and expectations of interested parties in order to be able to select business continuity strategies, implement business continuity solutions and write business continuity plans using this data.

Jen Otremba:                        Yes.

Bryan Strawser:                   I like your simple explanation.

Jen Otremba:                        We’ve had to describe this to organizations-

Bryan Strawser:                   Many people.

Jen Otremba:                        … recently quite a bit, right?

Bryan Strawser:                   Yeah.

Jen Otremba:                        Because there is a lot of confusion as to what exactly do I need, how do I get there, and then what do I do with the information once I have it?

Bryan Strawser:                   In the traditional world of doing the BIA, the way that I would say business continuity has been done for many, many years, there’s kind of a multi-part process here that you’re starting with a risk assessment to understand the risks and threats to an organization. Through that conversation you determine through some mechanism the criticality of functions because companies have teams. Those teams perform functions or processes, depending on what term you want to use, and those processes are either critical or not. Companies define what is and not critical. For example, in the world that I grew up in with BC a function that needed to be recovered within 30 days was a critical function, everything else wasn’t. We have lots of definitions as to how you get there. We would typically do a survey or some type of mechanism in a tool like Archer or Fusion or LDRPS or something that allows us to capture enough detail to understand whether or not this proce...

As the 2017 Hurricane season has wrapped up, we’ve spoken with several clients and prospects who call asking about building crisis management plans for the next round of hurricanes in 2018.

We always steer the conversation back to “Plans are great, but a framework is the real starting point so that no matter the threat or situation, you have a defined method to make decisions and communicate the results of those decisions internally and externally.”

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk about why crisis management isn’t a pickup game – that companies and organizations really need a crisis framework, a defined method to make decisions, clear roles and responsibilities, and so on in order to effectively manage through a crisis situation.

Learn more about our crisis management services at our “Crisis Management is not a Pickup Game” page — and about our line of crisis management plans and products that are ready-to-go out of the box at Crisis Playbook.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   What do you do when the crisis hits and you have no plan? None, you’ve got nothing?

Jen Otremba:                        Well, we always say that we should have a plan.

Bryan Strawser:                   We should have a plan.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, but we definitely have a lot of people coming to us, right, that don’t have plans.

Bryan Strawser:                   Usually following a major crisis, we get the question about, “Can you help us develop crisis plans?” Which, of course, we turn into a discussion of, “Plans are great, but you need a framework first and plans follow, because you need a way to make decisions and manage through the crisis.” Because if you don’t, you will be hit with a situation. I guarantee you. That for which you have no plan and for which you are not prepared to respond because you have no method of managing the situation, making decisions, and publishing communication-

Jen Otremba:                        Right. So what does your program look like holistically?

Bryan Strawser:                   Right. Or, what’s your framework, is at least as a starting point.

Jen Otremba:                        Right.

Bryan Strawser:                   But you think about a company that comes into a hurricane season and they have no crisis team, no framework, no plan for dealing with a hurricane, despite operating in hurricane-prone areas, what do you do? Or, there’s the alternative, which also comes up. We dealt with this at our last employer, which is you have a framework, and you have plans, and you have a process, and something happens, and there’s some leader not involved in the process who wants to throw the whole thing out and manage it a different way.

Jen Otremba:                        Right.

Bryan Strawser:                   And we always go back to a saying from the infamous Texas Director of Emergency Management for many years, Jack Colley, who said, “Emergency management is not an effing pickup game.” And we’ve bastardized into, “Crisis management is not an effing pickup game.”

Jen Otremba:                        Right.

Bryan Strawser:                   You have to have a plan.

Jen Otremba:                        Right.

Bryan Strawser:                   And a framework, and a method for dealing with the madness when the madness starts.

Jen Otremba:                        Right. What we just mean by that is that you can’t just decide wha...

The last several weeks have been dominated by stories of executives, entertainment moguls, news hosts, and politicians of all stripes being credibly accused of sexual harassment – and in some cases, assault.

We all agree that this sort of behavior is disgusting and has no place in our workplace, the halls of Congress, or at our State Capitols and City Halls.

But what happens if this is happening inside your company? How can you prepare for, respond to, and recover from the reputational damage that could be done to your organization if one of your executives is credibly accused of harassment or assault?

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk about how to prepare for this sort of situation, the messaging that may need to be required, when to involve outside counsel to protect your organization, and the need to ensure you’re doing the right thing for the company and victim(s) along the way.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Bill O’Reilly, Minnesota state senator Dan Schoen, Roger Ailes and Minnesota state representative Tony Cornish. What do these six men have in common?

Jen Otremba:                        Well, I’ve seen them all in the news recently.

Bryan Strawser:                   You’ve seen them all in the news recently because they’ve been credibly accused of sexual harassment, and in a couple of these cases, assault.

Jen Otremba:                        And I think information is still coming out about different cases and different people involved.

Bryan Strawser:                   Apparently, there’ll be a Senate ethics investigation on Al Franken. There’s going to be a Senate ethics investigation in the Minnesota Senate it appears for Dan Schoen. There’s an outside law firm looking at representative Tony Cornish’s activities, and Harvey Weinstein, of course, has been ousted from his company and is taking up residence in the UK, I believe … hiding.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah.

Bryan Strawser:                   His brother has also been fired from the Weinstein company, or whatever the name of their firm is, and then Bill O’Reilly allegedly paid millions of dollars in settlements, and Fox News fired him. And Roger Ailes made a multi-million dollar settlement with Minnesota native, Gretchen Carlson, over sexual harassment that he conducted with her over apparently quite a long period of time.

Jen Otremba:                        And I eventually guess this isn’t the end.

Bryan Strawser:                   Probably not, and we’re recording this episode, I think, for context the week of Thanksgiving, although it’s not going to be out for a couple weeks, so these situations have probably evolved significantly by the time you listen to this.

Jen Otremba:                        And there’s probably more.

Bryan Strawser:                   And there’s probably more, but we’re not here to talk about the news necessarily, and the facts of these cases. What we want to talk about is this rising risk to organizations that one of their employees or executives, or talent, have been engaged in this kind of behavior and the company becomes aware of it, and will have to deal with it.

Jen Otremba:                        And I don’t even know that I would call it a rising risk, or it’s just now being so much more highlighted as a risk.

Bryan Strawser:                   I think the reputational risk is what we’re trying to get at.

Jen Otremba:                        Yes, yes.

We’re asked a lot about how to interact with senior executives – how do you make the elevator speech, for example. It’s not at all unusual for us to come in and make exactly the same points that an internal team is making to their executives, but the executives listen to our point of view, because we’re the outside experts.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk preparing for that executive conversation – the need to have the elevator speech ready, but more importantly – having the courage to have the conversation that you really need to have when that moment of truth arrives in your career.

In other words, I hope you dance. Don’t be the wallflower.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   My first one on one with the CEO at our former employer … so you walk in there, and there’s this expansive office and a beautiful view, and he was grumpy, which I think he was grumpy most of the time.

Jen Otremba:                        Fancy suit.

Bryan Strawser:                   Fancy suit, but anyway, we sit down and we do the nicety thing, and we’d known each other from some previous roles that I was in. But we get into this … we start the … I should say he started the discussion about the reason I was there, and his first question was, “I don’t really understand this business continuity crap, and I don’t understand why we need to invest money in it.” And I, to this day, don’t know if that was game or if that was for real, but at the moment, it felt pretty real.

Jen Otremba:                        There might be some realism in it.

Bryan Strawser:                   There might be some realism in it.

Jen Otremba:                        I mean-

Bryan Strawser:                   But he looks … and then he just looks at me. So here I am in the moment of truth, right? And we’ve talked … you hear about this situation all the time, the elevator speech, the coffee meeting where you have five minutes to talk about whatever. But this was real. This was real life. I had a grumpy CEO who basically just told me that one third of my job responsibilities he didn’t see any purpose in.

And I looked at him and said, “So, there was this labor strike, labor issues in the port in Asia that was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday.” He said, “Yes, I read that.” “I bet you didn’t know that our principal competitor, who also gets 80% of their product from Asia, just like we do, has an exclusive deal with that port that this labor strike didn’t interfere with the loading of their containers on ships.” “I didn’t know that.” “Well, wouldn’t you like to be in that situation instead of them?” “Well, goddamn right, I would.” “Well, we’re not, because we didn’t even know that.”

And then, I walked through here’s the continuity. Part of the continuity strategy is you’ve got to look upstream to your supply chain, and the ports are part of that, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah.

Bryan Strawser:                   And then, we got onto more friendly conversation from there, but I think it was an eye opening experience for me from the standpoint of the interaction, but I think it was an eye opening experience for him, because nobody had ever had this conversation with him before.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah. So what we’re getting at here is we get a lot of questions at Bryghtpath about,

When you’re in the middle of a high-stress and fast-moving crisis situation, it’s easy for your ‘fight or flight’ instinct to kick-in – but as a crisis leader, it’s important to recognize that you need to keep your mind and wits about you as the incident unfolds.

The faculty and research staff at Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI) call this “going to the basement”.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk about their own experiences with “the basement” and how to prepare yourself for these situations in the future. Topics include the psychology of crisis leadership, the Harvard NPLI program, how to recognize when another individual is mentally heading “to the basement”, and how to pull them up to where they need to be mid-crisis.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   You’re a parent and you have a 16-year-old daughter who’s out on a date. She’s an hour late getting home. Where are you?

Jen Otremba:                        In the basement.

Bryan Strawser:                   You’re in the basement. We don’t mean the basement like you’re in the basement of your house.

Jen Otremba:                        No. Not physically in the basement.

Bryan Strawser:                   You are mentally in the basement. You’re in the part of your brain that sits on the bottom of your brain, called the Amygdala, which I’m sure I just butchered.

Jen Otremba:                        It’s pretty good, though.

Bryan Strawser:                   Come on, you’re the ex-medic. What’s it called?

Jen Otremba:                        I don’t know how to pronounce it, either.

Bryan Strawser:                   But, you’re in the basement. You are in the part of your brain that is about fight or flight, right?

Jen Otremba:                        Right.

Bryan Strawser:                   You’re mad because your daughter’s on a date, and she’s not home. You’re mad at her, but you’re going to strangle that guy.

Jen Otremba:                        Your stress hormone has peaked.

Bryan Strawser:                   The stress hormone has peaked. When we talk about this in the context of crisis management, or dealing in a critical moment or situation, we’re talking about that moment of panic. Where you’re confronted with this bad scenario that maybe you’ve thought about and maybe you haven’t. You’ve, mentally, just gone right down the drain to the basement.

Jen Otremba:                        We call it to going to lock-out in a helicopter world.

Bryan Strawser:                   Going to lock-out?

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah.

Bryan Strawser:                   You don’t know what to do. You can’t act?

Jen Otremba:                        No. Going to lock-out is when you take the engine out of manual mode and you manually adjust the power setting, but it, basically, will scream at you.

Bryan Strawser:                   Oh, it doesn’t like that.

Jen Otremba:                        Well, it’s in an emergency, so you’re using it to give yourself more power, right? We talk about that a lot, “Oh, they went straight to lock-out.” Because, they’re straight to high-speed mode.

Bryan Strawser:                   Interesting. I hadn’t heard that. I think it’s the same analogy.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah.

Bryan Strawser:                   We use this description.

Exercises are an important part of preparedness and the lifecycle of crisis management, business continuity, or communications planning.

But most exercises are just plain boring.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk about why exercises are often so boring and techniques to “spice them up” for your exercise participants. Topics include non-linear exercises, varying inject introduction methods, and the need for unique, high-energy facilitators.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   I have been to a lot of boring exercises.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, I was at one last spring that was so boring.

Bryan Strawser:                   Why was it boring? It was boring because poorly facilitated, poor content?

Jen Otremba:                        It just felt very monotone. It felt it was a little bit drug out, I thought. It was super long. And it was just boring.

Bryan Strawser:                   Do you think in that case of the boring exercise that the folks that were doing the exercise got anything out of that?

Jen Otremba:                        I think that they probably still got some things out of it. I think that they recognize that they were lacking in certain areas and they didn’t have some of the information that they needed. But, in general, I don’t think they got out as much of it, because I don’t think it was very memorable.

Bryan Strawser:                   What I think has been typical at least of the exercises I’ve gone to is that they’re just poorly constructed. They’re almost always about the most innocuous thing that you could have happen, or it is about the alien invasion and we’re all going to die. It’s like the Kobayashi Maru from Star War … Star Trek, that there’s no way that you’re going to survive the scenario. It’s the no-win scenario.

Jen Otremba:                        Yes, and I think in this case, I think it felt like a scenario that they have run 300 times before, and the way they presented it, it was as if they were bored with the scenario, because they’ve done it a bunch of times before. I don’t think it was very well done towards … done for the client to meet their specific needs.

Bryan Strawser:                   It’s really unfortunate because I think that I think exercises are important. I think we spend an enormous amount of time in the business continuity, or crisis management processes of conducting risk assessments and doing the business impact analysis, if you do those. The constructing plans and then it’s time to practice, because that’s how you build muscle memory. That’s how you kind of understand roles and responsibilities in real life, and then the exercise is always such a let down.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, ultimately you don’t want to spend all that time on the plan, and just put it on the shelf-

Bryan Strawser:                   Woo-hoo, we’re done.

Jen Otremba:                        We did it. It’s obviously best to test those processes, and make sure that they’re working and not wait till an actual crisis to test them.

Bryan Strawser:                   And they have to be tested in a realistic manner. We don’t want to test the, oh, the network switch failed, and that’s your exercise scenario, but you also don’t want the, hey, I’m out here in space by myself and now there’s five Klingon warships about to destroy me, and I’m going to die.

Jen Otremba:                        Right. You generally don’t want to do a zombie ap...

When a reputational crisis hits, everything comes at your organization at once. Social media, the mainstream media, the alternative media, local and national news outlets. Things will move more quickly than you can imagine.

You’re in the race.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through reputational crisis situations and bring their years of experience in dealing with fast-moving challenges. Topics discussed include crisis communications, social media, “fake news”, interacting with the media, and “spin”.

 

Episode Transcript

 

Bryan Strawser:                   Somebody screwed up big time. We’ve had to terminate one of our senior executives for personal misconduct in the workplace, and they’ve been let go. So, today was their last day.

Jen Otremba:                        Quietly.

Bryan Strawser:                   Very quietly. There was an internal announcement that they have decided to leave the company for personal reasons, and we thanked them for their service, and against our advice, the company has chosen not to disclose this individual’s departure, and as a privately held company, there’s no reporting requirement. That’s cool.

Jen Otremba:                        And the rumors start flowing.

Bryan Strawser:                   And the rumors have started to flow. That was this morning, and now it’s 8:05, and we’ve been called by the senior vice president of communications at this same company, and they just got a call from a producer at 60 Minutes, who has the story.

Jen Otremba:                        We thought we were in the clear.

Bryan Strawser:                   Thought we were in the clear. They don’t know what 60 Minutes knows. They just know that they’re calling. Therefore, they must know about the personal misconduct that was committed by this individual. So now we’re in the race. We’re behind.

Jen Otremba:                        We are way behind.

Bryan Strawser:                   Way behind, but now the race has started.

Jen Otremba:                        We’re back at the start line.

Bryan Strawser:                   What we’re talking about here is really reputation management, and dealing the media from a communications standpoint, and as we talk about … I think the thing that we hear a lot as a consulting firm is that, “Look, I want to control the spin. I want to control the story. I want to control social media.”

Jen Otremba:                        Control the media. Yep.

Bryan Strawser:                   I don’t remember who said it, but there was the famous quote that you shouldn’t pick a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel. We do this all the … Digitally now, of course, but it’s true, and I think the notion that you control the media is just utterly ridiculous. You can’t. They’re going to write and say on the radio and appear on television, and say the things that they want to say.

Jen Otremba:                        Employees are going to post things on social media.

Bryan Strawser:                   Employees are more definitely going to quote things.

Jen Otremba:                        They’re going to be completely made up stories.

Bryan Strawser:                   There were will be some great fake news out there, I’m sure. Real fake news in this case.

But while you can’t control the media, you can interact with the media, and you can influence the story in a lot of different ways, and I think we always … When we’re talk...

It’s been a difficult year for hurricanes, with multiple named major hurricanes making landfall in the United States and other countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite the difficulties, there are many lessons that can be captured from the hurricane season thus far that companies can use internally to increase their resiliency and ensure that they can weather a future major storm in a better position.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba share their observations and lessons learned from their decades of major hurricane crisis management experience and working with clients throughout the course of this year’s major hurricanes. Topics discussed include crisis management frameworks, decision making in a crisis, preparedness for employees and companies, and the value in public/private sector partnerships.

Episode Transcript

 

Bryan Strawser:                   Three major hurricanes so far this year.

Jen Otremba:                        So far.

Bryan Strawser:                   Harvey came first, and then Irma, and Maria. It’s the most in a single year that I feel like I’ve had to respond to since 2005 when it was Hurricane Katrina, Rita, and Wilma all within the same 45 day time period.

Jen Otremba:                        And hopefully this will be it.

Bryan Strawser:                   Hopefully this will be it.

Jen Otremba:                        For this year.

Bryan Strawser:                   But there’s still time left-

Jen Otremba:                        There is. There is definitely time left.

Bryan Strawser:                   In the hurricane season. What we wanted to do today is have a little retrospective on what we think are some of the lessons that companies should have learned coming through this hurricane season. Jen and I, as we’ve mentioned, have led the response for multiple major hurricanes. My first was Katrina back in 2005, and many, many, many lessons that I’ve learned in the almost 12 years now since that landfall.

Jen Otremba:                        I think mine was Sandy.

Bryan Strawser:                   Sandy?

Jen Otremba:                        I think so.

Bryan Strawser:                   Sandy was not exactly a small storm.

Jen Otremba:                        No.

Bryan Strawser:                   We start with, as I think we always do, that this discussion always starts with personal preparedness for a company because your employees will be not able to help your company prepare, respond, and recover if they’re dealing with preparedness, response and recovery for their own family. We’ve shared lessons learned about what they should do around personal preparedness, about make a kit and have a plan, exercise the plan, be informed, all the basics that you get from the ready campaign. We’ve done a podcast about it.

Jen Otremba:                        Blog posts.

Bryan Strawser:                   We’ve done a couple blog posts about it.

Jen Otremba:                        Yup, we have.

Bryan Strawser:                   And we’re seeing some of this play out now in Puerto Rico where it’s almost, I think we’re two weeks post landfall of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and we still have areas that are without power, that don’t have access to clean drinking water, to potable water, and there’s a massive logistics effort being undertaken to try and supply all of those things with a few hiccups along the way.

Jen Otremba:                        Right. To be fair, no matter how much preparation we put in,