Executive Management Team Study Period:
The Client: the Executive Team of an international company with a large workforce delivering operations throughout Southern Africa Region.
Project context: the client had concerns about how the organisation would manage an unexpected “bolt-out-of-the-blue” serious incident that might impact on their staff, third party suppliers, customers and business operations across the region.
Project framework: a bespoke seminar was designed and delivered in Head Office in South Africa and was pitched at strategic level throughout. The agenda was: an overview of BCM best practice to set the context; an explanation of the strategic crisis management toolkit, and; a facilitated session based on a scenario involving the sudden death of a senior national figure.
Project outcome: this approach enabled the team to explore the future operating environment in which they might find themselves, including the issues that might arise from the anticipated scenario and the challenges the organisation might face. The outcome gave the senior management the confidence, knowledge and skills to deal with any sudden disruption and triggered the drawing up of a specific Contingency Plan.
Business Continuity Management (BCM) Course:
The Client: a global company with a Head Office in London required BCM training to be delivered consistently across their regional head office teams in all of their devolved country offices.
Project context: this required a standard BCM course (3 x days) and supporting materials to be designed and approved by the company and included: a syllabus and programme; presentation slides; instructor notes; BIA methodology and template; a Crisis Management Plan and departmental BCPs and exercises to confirm student understanding at each step of the (BS25999) BCM life-cycle.
Project framework: the project was delivered using two methodologies:
- a high level (global) train-the-trainer workshop in UK for all the senior regional project managers and then, in the case of the devolved regions, a second train-the-trainer (5 x days) course for senior project managers and BCM sponsors from every country;
- in East and Southern Africa, BCM courses were delivered to senior managers in each of the main countries.
Project outcome: the approach enabled the client to train its own in-house team and to take their BCM programme to the next level. Having its own in-house BCM capability greatly improves the resilience of any organisation.
Crisis Management Workshop:
The Client: a company with a Head Office in Nairobi with a mature BCM system in-place required crisis management training for all senior staff who might be required to participate as members of the tactical level crisis management team (CMT) should it be required to operate during a turbulent election cycle.
Project context: although BCM was well understood by some in the senior management team, there had been recent staff turbulence and turn over resulting in a degradation of understanding and ability to deal effectively with disruptions. There was also some uncertainty that critical third party suppliers had the necessary resilience measures in place thereby affecting confidence in the business’s ability to deal with the anticipated disruptions.
Project framework: 36 x senior staff attended the one day crisis management workshop that provided a shared awareness of the comprehensive contingency planning already in-place and the client’s crisis management toolkit. Attendees also included key third party providers and logistics providers who were essential to the just-in-time operating model of the main business. The day concluded with a desktop exercise involving all delegates that was based on a civil disorder scenario as had been previously experienced in Kenya.
Project outcome: this approach proved a winner as it not only built business cohesion between the main business and its key third party suppliers, it also built an understanding of, and a consensus around, the BCP that was already in place. When civil disorder did break out, our client was able to maintain their operations unhindered.