Ten times a year, I help organize an evening get together of the top business continuity professionals in London over a beer. It is called BANG. We always have a controversial speaker from the business continuity industry. This week, crisis management consultant Gareth Jones spoke of how organizations learn (or don’t learn) from incidents. He said something about luck which I felt was very insightful. It explains why business continuity is such a hard sell in large organizations – why it goes through phases of importance – and why organizations so often get caught out with disastrous consequences. It may even explain why the consequences of the credit crunch cascaded so widely.

Business continuity pros help organizations mitigate and deal with incidents, things that happen when an organization’s luck runs out – a power failure, an explosion, a flood, a large systems outage. They put plans into place, they exercise and they educate. Frequently their budgets get cut. They may work for an organization for a couple of years, get frustrated and then go into consultancy for a few years then go back into another organization. Lifers are rare. It is a comparitively young profession, but an old ethos.

Resilience is a board level responsibility. The board has a duty to shareholders to protect as well as grow shareholders’ wealth. To understand organizational risks fully and stay prepared, they need to contemplate some very unpleasant possibilities and consequences. Many are completely incapable of doing so.

To understand why, one needs to consider how an organization’s senior executives got into their positions. It was through a combination of ability and luck – but mostly luck. The unlucky ones – the ones with equal abilities who experienced an organizational failure or a disaster that had serious ramifications – aren’t in those powerful positions any longer. Business continuity managers sell their wares to senior levels. They talk about bad luck to the lucky. What a tough sell that must be! They don’t get heard, they don’t get budgets, they get frustrated and leave, leaving and the unheeding organization vulnerable. The more lucky an organization is, the more likely it is to suffer badly from the consequences of a disaster when its luck runs out.

“At the Battle of Baghwaharam, my mount was killed and my right arm was cut off,” boasted the knight.  With my left arm, I fought my foes till none were left standing.  “That’s nothing!” exclaimed the second warrior.  “In the second Battle of Baghwaharam, a fierce enemy buried his axe into my skull and gouged out my eye, but I continued to fight and brought home his head as a trophy.” 

“Pish posh!” said Nasrudin, who had grown weary of their boasting.  “In the third Battle of Baghwahram, a mighty warrior as tall as three houses one on top of each other, drew his sword, easily the length of three of yours.  The fierce giant, in a single lightening swipe, lopped off my head.  My prowess as a fighter is such that I called to my sightless body, to place my head back on  my shoulders, which it then did,  whereupon I continued to fight as though nothing had happened.”

You know the feeling. Another PowerPoint. Another on screen treatise/eye test. Too many words. Too few pictures. What’s for lunch?

Launched two months ago, Prezi is a Hungarian made tool that helps prevent you, the presenter, from falling into the PowerPoint, glazed eyeballs rut. Last week at a seminar to government and financial services types, I used it for the first time in public instead of PowerPoint.

Getting used to how you create a presentation was a little bit of a challenge for someone like me who has been building decks of slides for a couple of decades. Things like drag and drop from the desktop just aren’t there. It is a hosted service. Behaviours and functions you expect in a desktop application don’t work.

To build a presentation, imagine a large canvas you want to stick objects to – pictures, words or movies to support your talk. You lay all your objects on the canvas then create a path to go from one object to another – your presentation. Though it can be a little distracting, the presenter guides you from object to object by zooming out and in. By zooming out all the way, you see the entire presentation’s content on one slide. That is how the presentation begins and ends. The audience gets an overview about what is to be presented and, at the end a reminder of what has been presented. Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.

During editing, there are some oddities. Prezi carries the zooming paradigm a little far by presenting commands and editing modes as a series of circles (the “Bubble Menu”). Another very odd wheel (the “Transformation Zebra”) allows you to move, rotate and size an object. You must remember my brain is wired to doing things differently, and I am sure a child would grasp Prezi very easily. “Frames” allows you to group objects so you can view multiple objects in the same way you might see them on a slide.

Now for the parts that would trip up a six year old. To insert a graph, you first have to convert it to an image file and then import it. I ended up using PowerPoint as an editor, creating the image and adding it to that canvas. Right off the bat, that was extra work.

Because you can zoom, the tendency is to overdo things, creating too many transitions that could distract an audience. This is especially true of text. A normal text slide has a title and bullets you see in their entirety. Its build transitions are usually minor. With Prezi, the temptation is to zoom on a phrase or word, then into another phrase, and so on. People could get dizzy and turned off by gimmickry.

To be able to play the presentation offline, Prezi creates an executable for you. Sharing that file afterwards has its pluses and minuses. You assign rights to individuals or make it public on the Prezi site – which can be impractical for many inhouse corporate uses. The obvious step would be for Prezi to make an on premises version.

The main lesson I learnt was to keep the presentation simple. Because the tool is so new, your presentation will stand out anyway and that project might get more support. The extra effort in creating that Prezi file could well be worthwhile. www.Prezi.com

In an earthquake, well designed buildings in Japan absorb shocks by separating the building from the base, by using deformable building materials or with internal counter balances.  Buildings are more elastic.  Communications in a crisis also need to be elastic, to absorb shockwaves. In a crisis, services, technology, people and resources you take for granted may not be available where they are needed.  Computer networks, email systems, phones and power – any of these may be degraded or lost through a crisis, or they may be the cause of a crisis.  Obtaining intelligent awareness of a situation, working collaboratively towards decisions, conveying instructions and obtaining feedback depend on timely, accurate and digestible communications.  A crisis that limits usual communications choices necessitates resourcefulness.  It demands elasticity in the way individuals, teams and organisations think and act.  It demands elasticity in our infrastructures, our processes and policies.  Elasticity buys time and rigidity spends it.

Elastic thinking is the ability to recognize new priorities quickly, to broaden peripheral vision, to make fast decisions and to act appropriately.  If appropriate, security gives way to expediency, best guess becomes good enough,  quick and dirty wins over detailed and thorough.   Elastic communications is the ability to switch media to minimize the loss of your normal media choices.  If your corporate email is down, can you easily switch to a public mail system such as Google Mail? If it is necessary to communicate two way rapidly with employees and their loved ones over public instant messaging or SMS, can that be easily done in a Starbucks? Do you even have those instant messaging addresses on your laptop?  Are they a facebook or LinkedIn group? If your continuity plans are held on internal servers, are they also on third party servers “in the cloud” or on usb sticks, or handhelds?  How would you use Twitter to broadly disseminate information and solicit rapid feedback in a crisis? 

Elasticity is the least expensive path to build resilience.  It is provides a higher return on investment than building infrastructure.  Bespoke infrastructure contingencies are expensive.  Using multiple, off the shelf, public services are cheaper.  Elasticity builds agility. An elastic organization is a more open one, one that listens to customers better, responds more quickly and works more collaboratively with suppliers.   The benefits of elasticity go far beyond those of organizational resilience and the ability to withstand large seismic shocks.

I confess to owning two blogs.  One is my work blog, and the other, this, a more whimsical personal blog.   As sometimes happen, there is a blog item that falls between two stools.  Here I blog about virtual teams (and of course, Nasrudin), and there I blog about sales channels – sometimes known as routes to market – how products and services reach end customers.  What is the connection between virtual teams and sales channels?   A channel ecosystem is a large virtual team, with a vendor at the heart of it, trying to motivate, cajole, coral, train and support third party companies to do their bidding and add value.  Plus I have this YouTube Symphony thing whirling in the background.  So this time, a blog on virtual teams, sales channels and the YouTube Symphony as an example of a large virtual team went to my work blog.

The King’s wise men were summoned to Court to cross examine Nasrudin. This was a very grave case. The Mullah had admitted going around the country exclaiming “The Court’s “wise men” are ignorant, indecisive and confused.” He was charged with undermining state security under new legislation designed to protect the state against foreigners planning terror.

Speak first, said the King to Nasrudin “Bring me pens and paper,” said the Mullah The pens and paper were brought. Give them to each of the first seven wise men. They were handed out. “Have them each separately write an answer to this question: “What is bread?” This was done.

The papers were given to the King who read them out loud. The first said, “Bread is a food.” The second said, “Bread is flour and water.” The third said, “Bread is a gift from God.” The fourth said “Bread is baked dough” The fifth said, “That depends on what you mean by “bread”.” The sixth said, “Bread is a nutritious substance.” The seventh said “No-one really knows.”

“Once they are able to decide what bread is,” said the Mullah, “then they can decide on other things, for example whether I am right or I am wrong. Can you entrust serious matters of judgement to men such as these? Is it not strange that they cannot agree on something that we eat every day, yet they are unanimous that I am a terrorist?”

The king sentenced his treasurer to death for defrauding the public purse and appointed Nasrudin as his replacement. Not long afterwards, the king learned that Nasrudin was giving treasury money to the poor. Summoning Nasrudin, the king asked “Do you want to end up dying like your predecessor?” “Surely your highness, you would not execute someone who is merely trying to prolong your stay on this Earth?” “How does stealing from my treasury help me to live longer?” asked the king.
“When I give money to the poor and needy,” replied Nasrudin, “ I ask for them to pray that you will live long and prosper. If we do not support prayers for you in this way, who will entreat Allah to keep you alive for another day?”

Sometimes taking a team member outside the role in which they are most comfortable falls flat on its face.

The German French horn player, Bruno Jaenicke (1887-1946), was, for many years, the principal hornist of the New York Philharmonic and a truly great one. He can be heard on many of Toscanini’s recordings. He rarely missed a note and was held in very high regard by the profession. In November 1931, at a concert with the guest conductor, Erich Kleiber, Jaenicke was booked to play Strauss’ first horn concerto.  Standing in front of the orchestra, he was completely unnerved, fumbled, missed notes and sounded like an amateur. After the first two movements, he walked off stage and didn’t return. It was announced to the audience that Jaenicke was unwell and that the piece would be dropped from the programme. Backstage, Jaenicke was seen smashing his horn by jumping on it and later reportedly got blindingly drunk. It was at least a week before Jaenicke reappeared. He returned to the section with no explanations and resumed his career as America’s finest horn player.

The marketer at CeBit from twenty paces away spotted that Nasrudin had money to spend. As the Mullah approached the booth, the marketer said to him, “You look like a discerning gentleman. Would you like this magic nosebag?” “What does it do?”  “Watch,” and from the bag, the marketer first drew out an iPhone, then a Wii, and finally a sat nav.   Nasrudin immediately forked over cash.  “Just one little thing,” said the marketer. “These bags are rather sensitive, so don’t annoy it.  Don’t let on to others too much about it and all will be well.”

Tired and hungry from walking around the huge exhibition, Nasrudin headed to the train station with the bag.  On the train he said, “Magic bag, give me a fresh warm giant pretzel.” He put his hand in the bag. It was empty.  “Perhaps it only gives out portable electronic devices because it is sensitive,” he thought to himself.  “Magic bag, give me a Bose SoundDock.”  Nada.  “Please don’t be annoyed with me, I just don’t understand you,” he said. Then Nasrudin remembered that when his donkey was annoyed, he bought it a new nosebag, so when he got home, he saddled his donkey, rode to his local dealer and bought a donkey for his new nosebag.  “Nasrudin what you doing with two donkeys?” shouted an acquaintance.   “You don’t understand, my friend,” replied the Mullah. “It is not two donkeys.  It is one donkey and his nosebag and one nosebag and his donkey.”

When Nasrudin’s donkey became sick, the Mullah wept in public. “Why are you crying, Nasrudin?” asked a friend, “Your animal is still alive!” “If he does die, I will have to bury him, buy a new one at auction and then spend many days training that donkey!” replied Nasrudin.  “There simply won’t be any time to grieve.”