<![CDATA[Erik Kopp Online - Blog]]>Thu, 27 Jun 2024 08:47:39 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Emergency Preparedness And Business Continuity Planning Go Hand In Hand]]>Fri, 08 Jun 2018 16:44:38 GMThttps://www.erikkopponline.com/blog/emergency-preparedness-and-business-continuity-planning-go-hand-in-handEmergency Preparedness includes planning and training and taking proactive action to be ready to do what needs to be done to ensure survival and safety, in case of an unplanned emergency or disaster.  Emergency Preparedness is important for families and communities as well as organizations. 

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) focuses on taking proactive steps to ensure the viability of a business during and after a time of unplanned emergency or disaster.  This a goes above and beyond IT disaster recovery, as the focus of IT disaster recovery is to restore IT systems and data but does not address other aspects of the business.

The bottom line is that without Emergency Preparedness for people, families and communities, effective Business Continuity Planning is not possible.  If people are faced with serious challenges threatening their survival and/or their family, these resources are not available to support BCP.  For the vast majority of human resources (i.e. people / employees) supporting a business, their first commitment will be to their families, households and communities.  The human issues relating to

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery should never be overlooked.  These must be proactively addressed as part of a comprehensive strategy to mitigate risks of unforeseen events.
To ensure the viability of your BCP, it is critical that the human factors are considered in the form of Emergency Planning for the people, families and communities potentially impacted. 

More information is available at: http://emergencyplanguide.org/]]><![CDATA[5 Steps To Achieving Balance In Your Life]]>Mon, 16 Oct 2017 23:55:12 GMThttps://www.erikkopponline.com/blog/managing-the-valuable-time-you-haveMuch of the “stress” and “work / family” issues people experience comes down to feeling you have no  control of how your time is spent; you are unable to spend your life-energy in alignment with your life priorities.  There is so much important urgent stuff to do that you just have no time left for things which are important to you.  Some of us tell ourselves we can put off until we have time, like learning French or taking up golf or eating better... And then there are other things which are only here now, like a baby’s first steps, holiday celebrations, graduations, spending time with older relatives…  Not being able to participate in these things because of being too busy with other “priorities” which take away your time and attention results in stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, and a whole bunch of bad outcomes.

People spend a lot of time figuring out how to budget money and manage calories, but figuring out how time should be spent is even more important.  It is possible to make more money or lose weight, but no one can acquire more time no matter what they do.  We all have a set amount of time on this earth, and that’s it.  With every day that passes, we have 86,400 fewer seconds left.  Doesn’t it make a lot of sense to value this time and make the very best use of what we have?

There are systems and resources on time management, but the fact is that you cannot manage or control time.  Time moves on regardless of what you do, so it is pointless to fight the passing of time.  What is within your control is how you manage yourself with the time you have.  And this is where you have the power to reduce stress and achieve the balance you are seeking.

1) You must decide very clearly on what your priorities in life are.  These will be different for everyone.  It might be family, or religion or community or the environment or a career or a creative outlet.  These are your big ticket items in life and you must always be aware of these.  Whatever they are, you must be very clear on your priorities in life; what they are and why they are important, otherwise you will never find the time to make meaningful progress on these.

2) Make sure you spend some time, whatever time you have - even if you can only find a few minutes, each and every day on those items you have identified as top life priorities.  If your top priority is to spend time with your child, or keep in touch with your parents, or take better care of yourself by doing exercise, or learn a new language or an instrument… Commit to spending some time each and every day on these priorities.  These are your must-do no matter what priorities, things that you will really regret not having done later on in your life.  Even if you only have 20 minutes a day to spend on each of these, it adds up.  Twenty minutes per day is over 2 hours per week.  Just start with this and it will become an automatic part of what you do and you will find you can spend more time in these areas without losing out in the other have-to-do items.

3) For the have-to-do items that always seem to get in the way and drain your time and energy, break them down into the tiniest bits you can.  Do you really need to sit down for 3 hours and put together that sales report all at once? Or can you spend 10 minutes now locating a key data table, then 15 minutes later setting up the presentation template….. Then, recognize the little bits of free time all around you and use these to the max to make progress on getting the small tasks out of the way, which will add up to getting the big tasks out of the way if you keep at it.  If you are riding on the train to work or sitting in a waiting room, can you use this time to catch up on reading?  Can you make some notes for a talk or a report you will be presenting?  Can you jot down some ideas for soccer plays or scout activities or put together a birthday party list for your child?  The fact is that even if you have some tasks which you think will require several hours of focused attention, it is often possible to break these down into much smaller incremental tasks which can be fit into any idle time which all of us have (think about waiting in lines, being on hold for customer service, sitting in traffic, waiting for the bus, being stuck at the airport……).  Recognize these pieces of valuable time you have and use them to the max.

4) Do not get obsessed with perfection.  You can typically save a significant amount of time if you focus on the important points of what is actually need and stop before you spend any more time on nice-to-have improvements.  Spend enough time on the must-do items to give your customer what they need, and that’s good enough.  Your customer may be a boss who needs some financial figures to be accurate (but does not need the color scheme of the slides to be perfect) or your child who needs a costume for Halloween (but does not need the stitching to be perfect).

5) Limit electronic distractions.  Mobile devices, email, texts and apps are great for staying in touch and sharing information easily, but they can easily go beyond the point of being value added and quickly drain your effectiveness in getting important things done.  Quickly prioritize truly important emails and texts (you can usually figure this out by skimming through the first line) and you will find these are a small percentage of all the “stuff” that comes in.  Let the rest wait until you are ready to focus on it; do not let it instantly pull you away from something more important you are focusing on.  If you always instantly respond to anyone who sends you a text or email, you are setting up san expectation that this is how you always work.  When you have multiple people sending you things all the time, it quickly takes over your life and attention.  Instead, take your time in responding and focus on a quality response.  This sets the expectation that you are valuing the person asking the question and spending your time to get them the best information you can.  If you provide value added responses, people will appreciate this above the quick one-line responses.  Lawyers are a good example of this.  Try getting a quick answer from a lawyer.  I can send them email and not get any response for several days.  But when the answer does come back, it is a quality answer, well thought out and clearly organized.   

Each of these five techniques will help you to stay focused on the big ticket items in your life and find ways to get the small stuff done and out of the way so you can spend more of your valuable life energy on doing what really matters to you; what you will want to have accomplished when you reach the end of your time allotment on this earth.]]><![CDATA[The Importance Of Continuity Planning For Any Business (Even Small Businesses)]]>Thu, 28 Sep 2017 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.erikkopponline.com/blog/the-importance-of-continuity-planning-for-any-business-even-small-businessesA Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a roadmap to enable a business to continue operations under adverse conditions, such as an unforeseen disaster or other unplanned interruption to the business.  This includes:
  • Natural Disasters, such as: bad weather, flooding, earthquake, disease, etc.
  • Man-made business interruptions, such as: labor strikes, power outages, arson, theft, terrorism, trade embargo, etc. 
  • Any other identified risk to the business, such as: critical supplier closes their doors unexpectedly. 
Business continuity planning is a process of identifying the potential risks to your business and then evaluating how to prepare for these so that if they do happen, your business can continue to be viable.  This means that you are still able to operate at some level needed to meet customer needs and to be able to resume normal operations at a defined point in the future.  Lack of adequate BCP means that a disaster could put you out of business permanently.

This is not the same thing as IT disaster recovery.  IT disaster recovery involves making sure your IT systems can continue to function and your data is still available in the event that your primary systems go down; if a fire wipes out your server room for example or a massive blackout disables your primary network routers.  Typically your IT service provider will provide you with options for backup hosting at other sites as part of Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP).  Large companies with big IT departments in different locations can manage DRP internally by having backup servers at different sites.

DRP is an important part of BCP, but BCP goes beyond just IT systems and looks at the entire business structure.  It is critical that the IT system continue to function after a disaster, but if there is no one available or able to use these systems then how will the business continue to operate?  BCP seeks to answer the big-picture questions such as:

  • In the event of a disaster where will your people work from?  
  • If downed trees and power lines cut off major roadways needed for distributing your product what will you do?  
  • If a swine flu outbreak keeps 3/4 of your staff at home can your business still function?  

This is what BCP looks at; being prepared for the unplanned interruptions.  Making advanced preparations just in case of disaster is good business, but it does involve some cost, which can be significant.  This is where cost-conscious organizations and businesses with limited budgets have major concerns.  The result can be avoidance or undue risk-taking; hoping for the best because it just costs too much to be adequately prepared.  This need not be the case.  Spending a lot of money to set up a BCP does not make it more value added nor better for your business.  Taking a logical approach that makes sense for your business and understanding the risks does make a BCP more value-added.

To be effective and value-added the level of preparation needs to be evaluated against the potential risk. This is what a good BCP plan will evaluate. The plan needs to be created after carefully looking at each critical business operation and identifying the associated level of risk should this operation go down.  In addition, there needs to be a thorough evaluation of the options for maintaining business operations in the event of a disaster; i.e. backup or contingency plans.  Based on this evaluation (typically know as a Business Impact Analysis or BIA), an effective and realistic BCP can be created which will effectively help the business to survive and operate during an unforeseen interruption or disaster.  

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]]><![CDATA[How to Use Common Software To Thrive In Today's Lean Organizations]]>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:27:59 GMThttps://www.erikkopponline.com/blog/how-to-use-common-software-to-thrive-in-todays-lean-organizationsAs organizations continue to restructure and become more lean than ever, many of us find ourselves today with more and more work to do since there are less and less people left to do it. When my parents were in the work force, if you needed a report written or a presentation put together you could ask your department secretary (later renamed the "admin") or you could go to the graphics department to help you out. Today the expectation is that you will do all of this work yourself. In addition, as people leave organizations the expectation is that business continues on as usual with no interruptions; which means their work gets added onto yours.

The first reaction to this is to try to step up by putting in more hours and work harder than ever to hold on to what you have and be grateful you are a survivor. This may work temporarily, until you either get burned out or run into a clash with your other life (spouse, kids, family, church, health). The problem here is that simply doing more of what you did before is not going to work out in the long term. If the answer is simply more hours, it will not be long before these hours are transferred to someone somewhere else in the world where labor costs are much lower. The real answer for proving your value to our organization and keeping your sanity is to find ways to do things differently such that you can get the most work done in the least amount of time.
Having other people to help you is no longer an option, so let's look at another option to boost your productivity to the max.

Putting emotions aside about current trends and organizational dynamics, let's look at a some facts. The fact is that many organizations are reducing the money they are willing to spend on human resources (people). But at the same time most if not all organizations are still paying for the most up-to-date automated resources (computers, software, networks, etc.). Companies want their remaining employees to have the latest tools to make the company more competitive and to save money.

Back in the old days, memos were typed on typewriters by secretaries who listened to dictation tapes. Presentations were produced on "slides" which were actual pieces of acetate which you had to put on an overhead projector or if you were really a big spender, you could opt for true slides which could be loaded into a slide projector with a carousel. Hopefully you had no mistakes in the presentation because then these would need to be printed again. This stuff is all gone due to advances which enabled computer users to make these items quickly and cheaply using software. Those who could or would not use the software too well eventually were phased out. Those who used the new technology effectively become more valuable.

So what can these computers do for you to help you out in today's crazy business world? Computers can automate many of the repetitive manual information management tasks you currently do. This includes looking up information, comparing lists, manual calculations, producing documents, sorting data, reformatting information... and the list goes on. Computers may be a pain to deal with and a necessary evil, but compared to the alternatives, they are a great productivity tool which you already have at your disposal right now. And we are talking about regular standard computers with MS Office (Word, Excel, maybe PowerPoint, Project or even Access). Many people use these tools for basic functions such as word processing and financial calculations or presentations, but this just scratches the surface of their full potential to help you become a master of your productivity. MS Excel, one of my favorite tools, has many handy database functions which allow you to analyze and manage very large amounts of information in just seconds. This can be done using just basic functions in Excel; you do not need to understand "computer programming" to set up a simple LOOKUP in Excel which enables you to link information from one list and compare it to information from another instantly. This is really handy for looking up information, populating data, error checking and so much more.

For example, let's say you were given a mailing list containing 30,000 street addresses with zip codes but missing the CITY, STATE information which you need to fill in before the list can be usable. You can find the information you need in a list of all US zip codes with related post office information, To finish the mailing list this you could either spend your time manually looking up each and every zip code and then manually entering the City and State in the mailing list over and over again... , or you could use an automated tool such as MS Excel to automatically lookup the needed information for each zip code and automatically return the City and State for each address. This will take you a little bit of time up front to set up, but once you have it you could then analyze multiple lists within seconds. If you opt for manually looking up each item, this could take you all week and you will need to then double-check it because you probably missed some things or made some mistakes. And then, just when you think you are done someone always asks you "can you lookup the 2-letter State abbreviation" or "can you look up the whole name of the state" or "can you add the +5 to the zip code" or "we need GPS coordinates added so the delivery crew knows where to go"... so you need to go through the list again!

This is a very simple example, but the same logic applies to more complex information management as well. This type of stuff is going to drive you crazy as you will most likely have a whole list of other work to do at the same time. Too much of this stuff is going to rapidly drain your productivity and burn you out. The fact is, if you are sill manually doing things which take you a lot of time, this task becomes a candidate for outsourcing to a lower cost labor market where the cost of 3 people manually looking up information would be less than your time is worth.

If there was a way to process a list or 30,000+ items in seconds with no errors, wouldn't that make you more valuable to your organization? And reduce your stress level?

You need to find a competitive edge which enables you to take charge of your time and productivity. And the tools you need are right at your fingertips. You just need to know how to harness them to work for you. So the next time you have an information management task to perform that is very repetitive and takes you more than 15 minutes to complete manually, look for ways to automate the process so you can did it quickly, with no mistakes and be ready for more requests. As technologies continue to advance, companies will continue to invest in them, so take full advantage of all the tools they are providing you with. Technology right at your fingertips will provide you with the "more resources" you need to be able to meet the demands of today's lean organizations and provide the most value to your organization and to help you keep you reduce your stress levels.

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