Mother Nature must be doing a job on me...the women's tennis home opener is postponed due to bad weather. Nonetheless, my friend John Ahearn from Keller had a few notes on disaster recovery that I wanted to show you.
In any DR event there is a certain amount of trauma like on the battlefield. It is therefore best practice to approach an emergency as such with the following steps that I have picked up:
1. A good plan with the right people is needed. Make sure that qualified people are responsible for the tasks that have been assigned during the emergency plan. Make sure that you have leaders that are tempered with real experience and will not panic or suffer an anxiety attack under real life situations. I have had many "apparently" cool and tough people completely loose it under a life or death situation and become useless.
2. Practice, test and simulation is always a good way to find out who your leaders are and what they can do under duress. This not only gets everyone use to what they are suppose to do under a panic situation but it also helps to condition them. It has been proven that even the most panicky people can be functional if they can do the basic repetitive action, one that has been engrained in them through practice, over and over.
3. Good leaders on the battlefield diffuse contention and get people working with each other instead of against (i.e. arguing and fighting.) Do not let people blame each other. Keep them busy in constructive ways. Don’t be afraid to decommission someone and let them sit it out and do nothing while you get a better person for the job.
4. Good leaders are positive and not afraid to do the work themselves. They also care about the other people and stay focused on the primary goals. Always convey a positive message to keep the troops stable.
5. Good leaders in the face of disaster are logical and remain calm. The are methodical operations that give the people faith that you have it under control and know what you are doing. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing; it’s important that others NEVER detect fear or see you sweating.
6. A good battlefield leader will always have the ability to force teams to a quick consensus through a majority vote. This gets things done and quickly. This is the concept of “Marshall Law.”
7. After the incident has been addresses, you will still need to run recovery operations in order to bring the operations from emergency to permanent. This is the “clean up ops” and do not sell it short. This is where you can still loose a lot of time, functionality and goodwill by not keeping on top of things.
8. Start documenting all activities and occurrences in preparation of negating risk. Be able to prove your actions where the best under the circumstances and all liability should be steered to negation through an “act of God” circumstance. Liability will become a big topic in the aftermath.
9. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) will occur in many individuals including you. All people should be interviewed and counseled for any adverse effects that resulted. You should quickly try and get as many people as you can to verify that they have been taken care of.
10. Be able to document and review the system for improvements and modifications. Be able to show that you have done a great job because this stuff is Ugly and "heroes have to be documented" or they become scape goats.
11. Update your resume to include your new talent under “emergency repair operations.”
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