August 31, 2006 Extension of roles and cross-training PRIMARY & SECONDARY JOBS JOHN GLENN, MBCI Certified Business Continuity Planner When I was a young lad wearing Air Force blue I had a primary and a secondary AFSC. My primary AFSC - "Air Force Specialty Code" - was that of a medic (corpsman). My secondary AFSC was that of a medical administration specialist. During "normal operations," I was a clerk. But when the alarm went off, I was a field corpsman. A buddy of mine, a cook in the Air Force, joined the Marines after his Air Force enlistment. In the Corps, every Marine's primary job is "rifleman"; regardless of rank or sex. A Marine's secondary job is whatever "extra" duties he or she is trained to perform. In the Air Force's case, the secondary job is a an extension of the primary job; for a Marine, the secondary job was cross-training. What's the point of this ancient history? "NORMAL JOB" NOT NECESSARILY "EMERGENCY JOB" As in the military, as in Business Continuity. While Business Continuity planners generally try to align response functions with business-as-usual functions, there may be times and places where a responder will be called upon to perform tasks unrelated to the person's regular job. I worked for a company in West Virginia which decided that when employees had to travel, the employee would make his or her own itinerary, including method of transportation, lodging, etc. The employee also was responsible to request a cash advance if that became necessary. Human Resources (HR) had no part in these travel plans; consequently, no one in HR was charged with travel planning or even to interact with a travel agency. Never mind that the company often paid a premium for tickets, hotels, etc. The company made the decision based on its experience and day-to-day operations. But . . . Imagine for a moment that the facility could not be accessed - pick a reason, any reason. Imagine that the company has to move 25 key personnel to a facility 250 miles away. Imagine each of these 25 people individually calling a recommended travel agent to book flights and lodging. Imagine a corporate policy which forbids certain key personnel from traveling in the same vehicle (car, plane). The travel agent may not know about the policy. The individuals may not think to ask the travel agent who else will be on the flight. Inefficiency and confusion. Let HR do it. Let one person in HR contact the preferred vendor (travel agent) with a list of people who will be traveling. Let HR tell the vendor that Mr. A and Ms. Z must travel on different aircraft - no explanation is necessary. Let HR tell the vendor that Mr. K requires special meals and to arrange with the lodging to provide those meals - or at least where Mr. K can acquire them. While HR is making the arrangements, Mr. A, Mr. K, Ms. Z, and the other 22 people on the transfer list can be packing their clothing and making whatever other arrangements are necessary at home. Even though making travel arrangements is not part of HR's mandate during normal operations, having this function assigned to HR during a crisis - and having someone trained to do the job - is a reasonable use of personnel under special circumstances. PANICKY PEOPLE Some people are excellent managers during normal operations, but fall apart under the pressure of a disaster event. Sometimes the manager refuses to delegate authority and tries to do everything himself or herself. Other times the manager simply is over-whelmed by the pressure. If, during advanced plan exercises - when "everything that can go wrong, does" - a manager fails to manage, an alternative arrangement is required. Probably the best, and certainly "politically correct," method of dealing with an panicky manager is to assign the manager functions out of the line of fire. All managers, at least in my opinion, should at some point be "go-fers" for their personnel; if someone needs something, the manager will "go for" the needed item. If a manager under pressure becomes surly and a threat to the response, the manager will have to be promoted to a safe position, and an alternative temporarily named "Event Manager." Every manager needs an "heir apparent" even if the heir apparent only is a temporary assignment, that is, the manager appoints a different person for each occasion. Qualified personnel must be identified before an event. What constitutes an "occasion," besides a disaster event? Vacations, off-site seminars and courses, illness, conventions and professional conferences - anything that takes the manager away from his or her regular duties. This "heir apparent" effort also provides a line of succession without the need to raise the issue of mortality. UNDERCOVER PLANNERS I worked on a project for a City IT department in North Carolina. My primary job was to mentor the IT folks who would do the actual planning. A professional project manager was employed to ride herd on both the City's people and this planner. (As an aside, I learned quite a bit more about project management as I watched this fellow work. One of the things I learned was to identify risks to the project, as well as to the client's processes.) The more I learned about the City's IT department, the more I wondered why I was brought on. Turns out the fellow in the office next to the one I shared with the project manager was occupied by a person with more than a little Business Continuity experience. The department manager had an IT disaster recovery background. Turns out, failing to utilize all the skills already available in house is the rule rather than the exception. I once worked as a technical writer for a telecom systems company. Part of my job was to help get the company's show-n-tell equipment ready to ship to exhibitions across the country (and later to retrieve the gear for inspection and storage). We needed to shuffle some crates and the forklift driver has tied up elsewhere. Who knew how to drive a forklift? Turns out at my last job, which had nothing to do with tech pubs, I had an opportunity to learn to drive a forklift. It wasn't on my resume, but it was an "in-demand" skill. Smart planners, if given the time, will make it a point to identify "hidden talents" of those folks swimming around in the personnel pool. Not all talents may be appropriate for a response function - I never figured out how to use an older lady's skills with a 30-06 hunting rifle, but knowing her skill made learning about skills of others in her group a little easier; it broke the ice. The bottom line for all this is that the planner needs to look beyond the obvious; the planner needs to ferret out both hidden talents and weaknesses if the plan it to work well and be as efficient as possible. "Normal" job functions are fine for normal times, but when "Normal" changes to "Crisis," roles become "subject to change." The planner needs to know who has the skills to adapt to the times. John Glenn, MBCI, has been helping organizations of all types avoid or mitigate risks to their operations since 1994. Comments about this article, or others at http://JohnGlennMBCI.com/ may be sent to Planner @ JohnGlennMBCI . com (c) 2006, John Glenn MBCI