Discover Resilience: The Podcast Buy-in beyond the boardroom: Building and maintaining SME engagement
Oct 28, 2025
April Renner, a seasoned Business Continuity Manager at Burns & McDonnell, shares her insights on fostering engagement with subject matter experts. She emphasizes the importance of empathy and understanding competing priorities. April discusses strategies, such as using tailored scenarios to clarify recovery roles and leveraging genuine curiosity to unlock deeper insights. She also addresses handling resistance with charm and strategic communication, highlighting a people-first approach to transform SMEs into committed champions of resilience.
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Start With Education And The Why
- Do assume subject matter experts start from zero and build education into your roadmap.
- Explain the why first to make engagement meaningful and not just compliance.
Delay BIAs; Build Partnership First
- Begin engagements by educating SMEs rather than running BIAs immediately.
- Treat the early conversations as partnership-building, not data collection tasks.
Match Their Schedule Not Yours
- Acknowledge SME workload and let them pick convenient times to meet.
- Offer flexible options like short weekly blocks or a single long session to fit their schedule.