How not to learn from history ?

2011, a terrible earthquake followed by a tsunami caused not only the death of almost 20 000 people and a nuclear accident of Fukushima but it also disrupted the supply chain of many sectors. Nine years after and in spite of many discussions on the topic of business continuity, it appears that most companies are still not prepared to face exceptional events.

Even if is never too late to take good and strong measures in front of a crisis, preventive measures should prevail and be embedded at each step of the strategy of the company. Is the additional saving on the purchase cost of a product by giving all the production to a supplier really worth if moving to a sole source supplier threatens the whole production process in case of a failure (due to geopolitical reason or to any reason out of the company influence capacity) ? Is the extra cost of preparing the IT architecture for intensive home office only a fancy nice to have or a part of a mitigation plan in case of unavailability of the office space ?

More than ever, the saying “Having no plan is planning to fail” is taking all its sense in front of crisis as the one we are entering. Not having a Business Continuity Plan based on updated risk management practices is leading companies to suffer and be more impacted than their better prepared competitors.

Of course having preventive measures part of the long term strategy and a business continuity plan doesn’t mean the company will not suffer from an unexpected crisis but it will sensibly lessen the impact and enable to restart with much more agility.