It's snowing in Dallas today, and it's beautiful. Winter weather is rare here, so when it happens, it's memorable.
My first "legal" New Year's Eve was in 1978--that night in Dallas we had one of the worst ice storms on record. Accumulated ice snapped trees and power lines across the city, leaving 300,000 citizens without power. So we left the clubs early, changed out of our party wear and hunkered down for a few days.
Fast forward 32 years. Disco's dead and I have more power in my iPhone than NASA did at the time. What happens today if your business takes a 3-day weather hit? Could be an ice storm. Could be a hurricane (Houston, can you read me?).
The facts are, if you're a small- to mid-sized company, you may never fully recover. Depending upon the damage, you may never reopen. Even if you're a large enterprise, the financial and brand impact could be devastating to your customers, your balance sheet, your brand and therefore your shareholders.
So right now, when the weather's nice, make sure you have a plan BEFORE disaster strikes. Know what's going to happen, who's going to do what, and where you're going to recover. Then figure out how to recover from your recovery. Ron Williams at Clearview says, "You're on the Titanic and you hit an iceberg. The lifeboat is your initial recovery. But where do you go from the lifeboat?" We find that many companies don't have Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans. And many who do, don't really know how to recover from the recovery.
So don't save your recovery planning for a rainy day, a windy day or an icy one at that.
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