When disruption strikes, you need to be able to execute with speed and precision. Your operations can’t stop to think about what to do. When disruption hits, it should be a natural motion. Ensuring operations across the whole company is a large task but one that can make or break the quarter or year. Ensuring employee safety is the first priority in operational resiliency. After that, move on to other operational needs.
Regularly testing operational readiness prior to a disruption is crucial. This makes you more agile to make necessary changes. Instead of scrambling to fix the operations across different departments, you can respond with grace and ease. In a crisis, the ability to not think about the most basic needs such as replacing desktop computers with laptops because you've already done it gives you the ability to have freed up intellectual capacity to consider higher level operational concerns.
For instance, there may come a time when all employees should work from home (WFH). Just as schools and companies perform fire drills, companies should perform WFH days. If this is the first time your company is doing this, try doing it in phases. For example, stagger having one floor or one office location do it at a time. This way, if anything seriously problematic happens, it won’t bring the company to a halt. Doing this will ensure your IT systems can handle the capacity, people will learn how to access their tools over VPN, and employees and customers can still communicate.
