As with any team whether its in an athletic or business setting, you need the right players on the team and those who do not make the grade, off the team. But, in order to determine who the roster should be, we need to understand what the team mission is in order to pick the right set of members. In our consulting business, I need a proper mix of staff who can lead at the highest levels, develop and implement highly complex strategies as well as those who can get the recovery plans completed at the tactical level. This requires a unique mix of people who have a broad set of skills that can work independently as well as jointly to make each client initiative successful.
So, how do we build a team that can do this? First, in our world, we MUST have a team who have “best of class” skills across the Business Continuity Planning (BCP) lifecycle who can implement any initiative that a client needs. As a boutique consulting firm, our mix of team members must ensure optimum client satisfaction.
In 2011, we assessed the capability of each of our consultants across our BCP lifecycle services as well as their ability to manage the customer relationship. We scored our consultants from 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest) on each BCP lifecycle component, ability to manage the client relationship as well as a factor I value most, ATE or Ability to Execute.
The resulting scores gave us our personnel depth chart. Our strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement by consultant could now be addressed and planned for in our current and future customer engagements. The depth chart validated many of our assumptions as well as highlighted the need for additional training for our staff so that we could better support each other.
To successfully manage a BCP program, you need a mix of skills that can make the program compliant with standards as well as highly resilient. To do that, you need the right people on the bus with the right skills that will make it happen. Get the people who don’t meet your needs off the bus.
Michael Herrera
Michael Herrera is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MHA. In his role, Michael provides global leadership to the entire set of industry practices and horizontal capabilities within MHA. Under his leadership, MHA has become a leading provider of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services to organizations on a global level. He is also the founder of BCMMETRICS, a leading cloud based tool designed to assess business continuity compliance and residual risk. Michael is a well-known and sought after speaker on Business Continuity issues at local and national contingency planner chapter meetings and conferences. Prior to founding MHA, he was a Regional VP for Bank of America, where he was responsible for Business Continuity across the southwest region.
