In a recent post on Ken Simpson’s Contemplating … Blog, Ken discussed the problems with the emergence of the resilience focus within BCM. Congratulations on your speaking engagement Ken and I for one would certainly want to attend. I’ll be posting a response to the whole resilience question tomorrow, but for now would like to address another issue which Ken raised.
Is there a lot of intellectual BC professionals out there?
I’ve touched on this subject before but would like to take the opportunity to revisit it. For the most part BC professionals and managers are not intellectuals. Now I believe this to be a positive thing, as they are far too busy making a difference and getting things done. However, there is a small cadre of professionals who do seem to spend their lives creating new and interesting ways of muddying the waters. That may very well be a sweeping generalisation but some of the material I’ve had to endure is offensive to my own intellect.
I believe that there is no real black art in Business Continuity. If you believe there is then I suspect that you are in danger of becoming extinct as the subject matures. Those who are tasked with delivering resilience within organisations are coming to terms with the practice and are discovering that the challenges they face are unlikely to be addressed by a complex and incomprehensible framework. It is back to my earlier assessment that business continuity should simple, but not necessarily easy.
I was for a long period of my life an academic researcher and as such am well aware of the required navel gazing and theorising that must be done in order to drive our collective understanding forward. However, science is more than an intellectual exercise, it is a rigourous process. Having attended many continuity conferences and symposiums I fail to see much in the way of rigour applied to theory. If you are an intellectual and focus your time on creating ideas and theories all well and good, but at some point you have to stick your head above the parapet and have your theories tested. Otherwise, you are just creating marketing materials.
I’ll rant about the subject of resilience tomorrow, but let me say this. I suspect that the reason we can’t come to a conclusion about the meaning of resilience is because everyone is busy trying to differentiate themselves. My concept of resilience is more impressive and holistic than yours. I’m all for rational debate but a little bit of intellectual honesty wouldn’t go a miss.
Addendum: Having reread this post I just wanted to point out, that this is not a rant against Ken Simpson. I haven’t read Ken’s presentation but I have no doubt that it is as reasoned and measured as his blog. Just wanted to make that clear.
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