Have a Plan for Business Continuity

Missing List in Joplin Tornado Drops to 156 – WSJ.com

“The Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce said Friday that at least 400 businesses and 5,000 jobs were affected by the tornado.”

If you click through and read this WSJ online article, you’ll notice a small video window.  The opening picture of the video is an electric guitar embedded neck first into a wall of a house.  I had never thought of my guitars as deadly weapons, but in the right weather conditions they are.
When I read about the number of businesses affected I silently hoped these businesses had disaster recovery and business continuation plans in place.  Unfortunately, the most likely answer is no and most of these businesses will ultimately fail.
Not many of us think about total destruction from an F-5 tornado.  But if you manage to survive at one point you will have to get back to work.
Time to spend some time revising my own business recovery and continuity plans.

Change or Die

Seth Godin: The New Face Of Publishing « Radio Litopia

One of the most difficult things you ever have to do as a manager, executive or consultant is helping others to change.  Follow this link to an interview with Seth Godin.  It’s about 30 minutes long but well worth listening to.  Godin’s thoughts about the future of the publishing industry are both scary and on target.  Could there be another business so entrenched in the past, so tied to doing things the way they have always been done that its leaders are unable to see the changes all around us and that doing nothing becomes the perfect strategy for a slow and painful business death?

More on Flight Risk

Employee Loyalty Waning as National Unemployment Rate Continues to Fall

No, we are not talking about holes in 737’s.  We are talking about MetLife’s 9th Annual Study of Employee Benefits Trends.  I always credit my sources so instead of a direct link to the MetLife study I’ve linked the article where I first read about the study.  There is a link at the bottom of that article to the download page at MetLife.