Wayfinding and business continuity

Last month, we explored the wayfinding skills that modern L&D leaders need in order to navigate the ambiguities and uncertainties of the 2022 workplace. We had some interesting results as learning professionals seek to find new ground in uncertain territory. All agreed in our survey that a healthy imagination, curiosity, and ability to look to the stars and imagine a new way forward, were as critical as ensuring teams had the time, presence, and energy for the journey ahead.

The skills that stood out, unsurprisingly, were the skills of an explorer: Imagining a better future, and establishing one’s current position, venturing out into the unknown and bringing their team along with them.

This week, we’re looking at another challenge – How do we carry on, when the systems that we have come to rely on don’t work anymore? How do you get to your destination if you can no longer rely on google (or apple) maps to plot that for you? I recall the old days of maps, guidebooks and printed materials as we tried to plot a course - in different times. Our reliance on digital technology has grown to the extent that it is almost impossible to think of how we managed before. But what happens if it fails? This requires a different set of wayfinding skills – it’s not as much about exploring; as it is about having a map with alternative routes, and other ways to achieve our outcomes to ensure business continuity.

Despite only lasting for a single afternoon, the Great Microsoft Teams Outage a month or two ago, was a timely example of how much organisations now rely completely on digital tools and systems to interface with one another in our working lives.

In case you missed it, there was a global outage of Microsoft Teams, a cloud-based collaborative work platform used by more than 270 million people.?

Here at BSI, we use Teams and Zoom for all of our remote project work, often running workshops with clients and all of our internal project communication. When faced with the outage, after realising we had no other choices, we took the opportunity for everyone to have a short break, get a breather, go for a walk! But as a fully digital business where everyone works remotely, it was alarming to get a brief taster of how disruptive a serious outage could be. How do organisations risk manage for events such as these in the face of so much uncertainty?

Another, less happy recent example - is the sad passing of the Queen (may she rest in peace) This, and the sudden decision for a day of mourning is set to cost businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity and revenue (and quite personally ruined a range of recreational holiday plans I personally had in store for this month) as well as putting projects, decisions and a range of other tasks on hold. The need for businesses to be nimble, find other ways to manage in the face of these unforeseen events has never been greater.

A final and most sobering example, is in the realm of Cybersecurity. The Australian Government has realised that businesses have a critical role to play in ensuring that the critical infrastructure that we all rely on in modern life is less vulnerable to cyber threats and has management plans in place for inevitable outages and incidents.

The Security of Critical Infrastructure (SoCI) Act reform makes businesses legally obliged to plan for continuity of critical infrastructure in the event of cyber-attack.

The grace period for complying with the Act expires in October, so if your business isn’t aware of this, you may want to check it out.

Of course, cyber threats, world events, and tech system outages are only a few of the situations that are outside our direct control that stand to jeopardise our daily lives and our ability to do business. Others are the now-all-too-frequent natural disasters, pandemics, economic collapses, and more. How we prepare for unexpected events directly determines our ability to respond... and this applies to businesses as much as it does to learning.

It’s a different kind of wayfinding. Instead of being an explorer, this kind of wayfinding seeks to find ways to continue to do the things that we need to do in life - live, work, and operate, and (gosh I hate this word... PIVOT) to ensure the learning and productivity of your people in the face of a range of unforeseen challenges.

So, what skills we need to invest in, to help our organisations operate, despite threats to continuity?

?Resilience: Having systems in place, alternatives, and other ways to operate

·????????Identify the potential areas of vulnerability

·????????Plan around a range of scenarios, assess likelihood and severity

·????????Invest in risk mitigation strategies, and other paths and how they work

·????????Engineer processes and systems for resilience and high availability

Redundancy: Having backups in the event of disruption

·????????Having spares, alternative processes, and backups of critical data

·????????Ensuring teams are diverse and people cross-skilled to solve for challenges

·????????Learning and courseware that is adaptable – range of options for delivery

Recovery: Getting up and running again quickly after a disruption

·????????Ensuring clear communication to teams, clients and effected parties

·????????Reporting and data – making sure you have access to the right information

·????????Decisive action – quick and effective decisions in stressful and unknown situations

Readiness:

·????????Having backup plans – Plan B, Plan C etc readily available

·????????Training teams on situations and the principles of navigating challenges

·????????Clear, effective and precise training and communications planning

·????????Learning and people, investing in their capabilities to manage adversity

Could you and your team manage in the event your carefully defined path as an organisation was interrupted or threatened by an unknown event? How many of these skillsets do your teams have, and which would you like to develop further?

BSI specialises in cyber security, risk management, and readiness with a range of learning options to support teams to be aware, understand the principles of risk, and build capability to navigate uncertainty. If you need support to develop these skills in your team, get in touch!