Your Lead Time is Not as Long as You Think it is

I have to overcome objections to various aspects of business continuity. Even after I've won over the CEO and they are my client (contract signed, money in my account). I've now encountered the same blind spot in two different clients that involve the runway they think they have (and thus consider something about business continuity as not that important).

In the first scenario, the CEO felt that warning their clients about being able to be without the company's services in case of a disaster was sufficient to have a week or longer RTO (return time objective, or, how long you can be down before your business is dead). I would get the CEO back to a day RTO only for the CEO to eventually wind up back at the week-or-greater point. "Hey, it's on them. We warned them it might be possible." On what became the final oscillation to a week before I got the CEO back to one day, the CEO said something new that was never said before: "Plus we tell them we need at least five-business days' notice to do an order for them." Ah, ha!

I said, "What if I told you five business days ago I told you I needed the order to be done today? And today you are not operational." I was met with silence. I didn't even need to ask if the client would be mad if they didn't get their order for another week.

In the second scenario, the CEO and COO were discussing their relative duties. The COO felt that everything the CEO did was more important and required the most attention because of how frequently those duties came up. The COO's duties had weeks' worth of notice. I said, "Ok, so the thing you usually do quarterly is due on the 15th. What if today is the 14th and you didn't submit it yet?" There was a pause for a few seconds and then, "Ok, I see your point."

The universe is not planning to throw a wrench in the works when it is the best and most convenient time for you. It's kind of like tornadoes: they are less dangerous in the daylight because you can see them, but they are more common at night. Or hurricanes during high tide: there is more storm surge which means more flooding, so a hurricane making landfall during low tide is better. We don't get to send the universe a preference message like we can with our dinner RSVP.

Having someone point out the timing is important. I made the mistake myself based on not knowing how bad the infrastructure in WNC was during Hurricane Helene: I put off writing and recording a short, 15-minute entry for a digital library for potential customers until four days after the storm. It wasn't due until the Monday afterwards, anyway. I figured we'd lose power for maybe three days. Well, no power for eight days made my plan impossible. I could have done the project up to four days prior to Helene hitting (I had notice). That project was for the largest IT conference in the US and was going to expose me to potential clients. That was an opportunity that I didn't get back.

Awareness combined with what-if impact is important. It doesn't matter how much time you have today, it's how much time you have between when disaster hits and it's due. So, plan to for it to all be tomorrow - the disaster and it being due. You will never know, but at least you'll have a plan in advance.

And the future you will thank the now you.