ASIS panel examines 3 make-or-break organizational resilience factors
Three organizational resilience factors can make the difference between stress becoming a crisis, a crisis becoming a disaster, or a disaster becoming an unrecoverable catastrophe. These factors are:
- An Organization’s Resilience Vision
- Resilience Role Clarity
- Sense-Making Leadership
On Monday, Sept. 12, a panel of industry experts, including Ray Bernard, principal consultant for Ray Bernard Consulting Services (RBCS), Victor Rocha, Director of Security, Loss Prevention & Emergency Preparedness at Goodwill Southern California, and Kelly Stewart, Managing Director & CEO of Newcastle Consulting, LLC, will convene at ASIS 2016 in Orlando to discuss how these and other factors can impact an organization’s ability to recover from or adjust to change and adversity. The session (ID: 2208) is scheduled to take place from 1:45-3 p.m. and will be held in room W311E inside the Orange County Convention Center.
The following is a brief overview of each of the aforementioned resilience factors that the panel will discuss in more detail during the session.
The Resilience Vision
Resilience is not simply a new label for business continuity, crisis management and disaster recovery. It is not about “hardening the organization” against threats and harmful events. It is about strengthening the organization against a variety of stresses and impacts, so that the organization can continue to effectively carry out its mission even while stressed or disrupted, and can recover quickly from a disruption beyond its operational limits, if and when that occurs. It is about adaptive response, rather than fixed response. The resilience objective is to make the organization flexibly strong, not rigidly hard. This is the basic understanding of resilience that an organization’s people need to have. It enables them to respond effectively with self-guided initiative under stress, impact or disruption. This is why the resilience vision must be shared with, and understood by, every person in the organization.
Resilience Role Clarity
There are two categories of response when dealing with stress, impact or disruption. The first and highly important response is to “carry on” in one’s normal job role, using personal initiative and perhaps extra effort and care, to continue achieving the job’s purpose in support of the organization’s mission. The second category of response, when impact requires it, is to step aside from one’s normal job role to take up a special response duty relating to an incident, emergency or crisis. This could simply be the job of obtaining personal safety for oneself and others nearby. Thus every individual has a role in organizational resilience. It is either one’s usual job role, or a special response duty including that of personal safety.
Sense-Making Leadership
In "carrying on" in the face of severe stress, impacts or disruptions, an individual is likely to be called upon to "go the extra mile" on behalf of the organization. Whether a long-term organizational change is involved after a crisis or disaster, or just a temporary change is needed to deal with a point of high organizational stress, caring leadership is critically important. As Professor Jackie McCoy and Alan Elwood have explained in their Business Continuity Journal article about human factors in organizational resilience (Volume 4, Issue One, page 5), “The leader’s primary role in times of change, ambiguity and complexity is one of sense making. Acting with integrity, and from a position of personal resilience, leaders are charged with anticipating, interpreting and articulating the change and its implications.” Viewing events through the eyes of their people—upon whom they rely to "carry on" for the sake of the organization—and taking their perspectives into account in crafting explanations, guidance and direction, may in some situations be the most critical organizational survivability factor.
About the Panelists:
Ray Bernard, is the principal consultant for Ray Bernard Consulting Services (RBCS), a firm that helps public and private organizations achieve their organizational resilience objectives. For more information about Ray Bernard and RBCS go to www.go-rbcs.com or call 949-831-6788. Mr. Bernard is an active member of the ASIS International member councils for Physical Security and IT Security. He is also a Subject Matter Expert Faculty member of the Security Executive Council (www.SecurityExecutiveCouncil.com). He writes insightful articles for his blog, The Security Minute.
Victor Rocha is the Director of Security, Loss Prevention & Emergency Preparedness at Goodwill Southern California, the fourth largest Goodwill organization in the world. In addition, Victor has designed and implemented comprehensive security and emergency management programs for a variety of retail businesses, logistics firms, and schools in his 30 year career. Victor has also served as a Police Officer and Detective for the Los Angeles Police Department. Victor is a member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP). Victor earned his B.A. in Criminal Justice from California State University, Fullerton.
Kelly Stewart is the Managing Director & CEO of Newcastle Consulting, LLC, an Enterprise Security Risk and Information Management Consultancy, with more than 25 years of public and private experience as a seasoned international security practitioner in leading multinational security management operations. His belief is in proactive, predictive, and responsive advice and access to information critical to building a companies’ resilience to operational risk thereby protecting its people and assets. Kelly is an Council Vice President at ASIS International and is a very active contributor to ASIS educational activities. He is also an Emeritus Faculty member of the Security Executive Council (www.SecurityExecutiveCouncil.com).
