How Do You Plan for a Disaster or Crisis?

Planning for a disaster for your business is never fun, and it can even be a little depressing. That’s because planning for a disaster or crisis is basically dreaming up all the scenarios that can befall your business and then imagining the worst-case scenario. Then you have to come up with all the things that you will do in response to that disaster.

For example, take the most drastic thing that could happen, like a fire in the building. Then, develop a checklist of everything that you would have to do if the building were on fire.

First, you have to evacuate and check to ensure everyone is safely out of the building. You have to secure your computer systems by having off-site backups that run on a daily basis. You have to ensure that anything that is combustible, like chemicals, is as safe as it can be, such as in a fire-proof container. You have to make sure your insurance policy is up-to-date.

This will be a detailed checklist that takes a fair amount of time to develop because no one can come up with something like this in five minutes. You will probably even need a disaster recovery committee with members from different parts of the business to come up with these lists.

Then, think about the next disaster you would be likely to face, like a tornado (a common issue in Texas, which averages 137 tornadoes in a year).

Again, list everything you would have to do to survive and then recover. That starts with designating the safest area in the building where the associates can collect. Again, it means having an off-site computer server to back up all your IP and financials.

Once you’ve gone through all the disasters you could go through — tornadoes, floods, an airplane hitting the building, cyberattacks, and so on — then develop a plan and a schedule to practice everything. That way, in the case of a disaster, everyone would know what is expected of you.

Next, you have to make sure that you update the plan every year. That’s because you’re going to add new people and bring in more sophisticated machinery and software. Your business is going to grow and require new ways of thinking.

Basically, your disaster recovery plan is not a one-and-done. The important thing is that you practice and update the plan. As you practice it, take note of what works and what doesn’t, and then make the necessary updates.

Your disaster recovery plans are a living document and you need to grow and nurture it like you do your business plan, your customers, and your five-year plans.

Your Company Will Die Without Its Data

Let me stress that your business needs to have an off-site cloud-based server to hold all of your IP and financial data. The number one reason a business fails after a disaster is because all the financial data is lost. Your insurance can pay for everything else, and you can rebuild your building and have your staff work from home (where appropriate).

But it will be nearly impossible to rebuild years’ worth of financial data or your proprietary formulas, plans, and blueprints.

Make sure you have off-site cloud-based backups, preferably in another state. Can you imagine the world of hurt you would be in if your business and your backup were both wiped out by the same hurricane, tornado, flood, or other natural disaster?

And make doubly sure that you are performing daily backups of all your data, and even weekly backups to a second off-site cloud-based location. (It won’t hurt to have two backups of your most important information.)

I once had a business where the IT manager was supposed to perform daily backups of all of our data, but he didn’t do it for six months. There was a data breach, and it was one of the most painful things to rebuild six months of lost data. Fortunately, we didn’t lose everything because we had backups that were six months old. But we did have to rebuild everything that was lost up to that point.

Needless to say, I fired the IT manager immediately and the horse he rode in on! If he had made daily backups like he was supposed to, we would have recovered from the data breach and only had to reinstall everything up to the end of the previous day. He would have saved his job and my sanity.

I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now I help companies turn around their own business, including pivoting within their industry. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Photo credit: 111 Emergency from New Zealand (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 2.0)