In the best of all worlds, everyone in an organisation is convinced of the merits of business continuity planning, and works to make BC happen as it should. Idealism may be inspiring, but many BC managers feel they have more in common with lone voices in the wilderness, or Cassandra of mythical Greek fame, who accurately predicted disasters, but could not get anyone to believe her. So is it really down to the numbers, where the majority will rule over the minority, and business continuity will be smothered at birth? Actually no – and here are reasons why a minority supporting BC can still make it happen.
The first thing to understand about being in a minority over business continuity planning (if that is the case) is that you’re different. Instead of being in the mainstream, conformant group, your bias towards BCP marks you out. That means that other people experience a need to resolve the conflict between what you recommend compared to what your organisation does. Rather than simply accepting something because everybody else does, you’re in effect obliging them to work through it for themselves. If your BCP ideas and suggestions are clear and logical, then a little in-house promotion to the right people can disproportionately boost your chances of being listened to – really.
The more converts to business continuity planning you can get to join your minority, clearly the more leverage you have. Just make sure that your group continues to sing from the same song-sheet; “united we stand, divided we fall” applies just as much to minorities as to majorities. At the same time, see if you can get a broad cross-section of people involved from the organisation. You’ll have more impact if you can rope in people from finance, quality, sales, production and IT, than a group drawn exclusively from cost accounting. That way your minority standpoint can become the majority viewpoint and BCP can constructively pervade the whole of your organisation.