Why Contingency Planners SHOULDN'T Seek Ongoing Exec Support

[anderm1]

Lately, I have seen no shortage of articles discussing ways in which to garner executive leadership support for contingency planning programs. Getting executive support and buy-in has been somewhat of an obsession for contingency planners for some time now, and seeing these articles arise continuously has made me question why those in our field have been discussing this topic for eons, while gaining support from executives continues to elude. Though I understand that a base level of support is necessary in order to establish and fund a program, support and involvement not required on an ongoing basis to develop and operate an effective program. In fact, I often wonder if the issue here is twofold - a. professionals in our field are confusing “support” with “involvement of executives in day-to-day decision making” and b. professionals in our field have never truly considered why ongoing executive support is required, as far as they are concerned, it just is.


I would argue that only a base level of support from executives is required to effectively operate any contingency planning program. In fact, I would suggest that, based on experience, executives will respect any individual and any contingency planning team more if they have been able to connect with and provide valuable services to middle managers and employees. My argument is simply this – contingency planners may be more productive, valued, and respected within their organizations if time were spent offering valuable services and guidance to the organization as opposed to spending much of their time preparing reports for and seeking the blessing of executives. Spending time justifying your existence to executives will only get you so far before questions are asked, whereas those spending this same time working with those involved in the business will ultimately be able to prove their true worth, and integrate themselves in the day-to-day life of the organization.


Are we at a crossroads? Should “gathering executive buy-in” be removed from best practices and replaced with “integrating with and meeting the needs of middle management” ? Should gathering executive support continue to be a core key practice but redefined? Or should we continue with the status quo, spending endless hours seeking buy-in and praise from those at the highest levels?

I would love to receive comments here or on my blog :thecontinuitylounge.blogspot.ca

[CTaylor21]

You cannot have any resemblence of a successful BC/DR program without exec. buy-in. That is a base-line given. Try to do something without it and see how far you get.

To me, your post seems to be tip-toeing around education and training. Educate the whole organization, not just middle mgmt, and you have a much better chance of building and sustaining not only a viable, but successful BC/DR program. Of course you have to tailor your education and training to the level of your audience, i.e. do execs need as much detailed education and training as middle mgmt?

[JohnGlenn]

1. We need executive buy-in for
1a: funding
1b: flag waving - if the execs are NOT on board, lower level managers and staff will only give, at best, half-hearted effort
1c: executive roles in the response effort - dealing with media of all types, with stockholders, etc.

MOST of the time, the practitioner's exposure to the Executive Suite will be with the plan/project/program sponsor; in the initial stange (through First Deliverable) expect the Sponsor's fellow execs to (generally) "rubber stamp" his/her recommendations.

IT IS CRITICAL for lower level managers to see executive involvement; lacking that, they and their staffs will give, at best, half-heated support to the practitioner's effort - this will result in a non-plan (GI-GO). I have seen what the ABSENCE of Very Senior Executive support can do to a program.

Very Senior Executives - C-level folk - need not/should not be incolved in the day-to-day project/plan/program development, BUT they SHOULD be involved in response activities; of course ALL personnel (including support functions such as vendor management, HR, etc.) need to be involved in response activities.

[anderm1]

Thank you both for your reply - I am happy that I was able to generate some discussion.

I agree with both of you that execs do need to support the program in principle in order to generate the intial funding, buy in from all levels in the organization, and so on.

However, my primary point was that we seem to be spending significant time and effort on telling our execs why we deserve attention, when really we should be proving our value with our actions and proving our worth to those at all levels in the organization. I just feel that the topic of 'achieving exec' support has been beaten to death, and perhaps we should be focusing our efforts on our day-to-day activities. In my case, I have had much more success in getting c-level attention by proving my merits and the merits of our contingency planning program to those across the business, and in turn, having those individuals discuss these merits with their managers, vps, evps, etc.