Preparing for the Unexpected
ALEX FULLICK, MBCI,CBCP,CBRA,ITIL,CORS,cABCF,ISO22301,Author
Preparing for the Unexpected is about how people, organizations and communities plan, prepare, test, communicate and respond to sudden unplanned events such as natural and manmade disasters and crises. The show is for everyone who wants an understanding of how plans are created for individuals, organizations and communities and for anyone who wants to know what they can do in their own lives to help protect themselves from unexpected events.
There is a myth that disasters happen to others but in reality, they happen to everyone. It's just a matter of when and how well-prepared you are. The greater the level of awareness, communication and knowledge, the quicker one bounces back from adversity.
The overall aim of Preparing for the Unexpected is to reduce the suffering, effects and impacts caused as a result of disasters and unexpected life events by increasing knowledge and awareness of Operational Resilience, Business Contingency, Disaster Planning, Crisis Management, and related activities.
There is a myth that disasters happen to others but in reality, they happen to everyone. It's just a matter of when and how well-prepared you are. The greater the level of awareness, communication and knowledge, the quicker one bounces back from adversity.
The overall aim of Preparing for the Unexpected is to reduce the suffering, effects and impacts caused as a result of disasters and unexpected life events by increasing knowledge and awareness of Operational Resilience, Business Contingency, Disaster Planning, Crisis Management, and related activities.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 30, 2019 • 57min
Earthquakes and Earthquake Prediction
Earthquakes are powerful natural forces that have the ability to cause allot of devastation and early prediction is something still to be defined. Yet, it's happening. We speak with Dr. Dimitar Ouzounov, an expert in pre-earthquake phenomena, Earth's lithosphere-atmosphere coupling, and short term earthquake forecasting using space technologies. Dr. Ouzounov talks to us about a current AMADEUS initiative that is helping to determine earthquake probabilities and their potential impacts; something that will take years to accomplish but potentially save the lives of millions of people. Dr. Ouzounov will also discuss some of the challenges with these new technologies and what the future holds for Earthquake predictions.
May 23, 2019 • 56min
BCM Challenges for Small Organizations
Business Continuity Management (BCM) can be a major challenge for small organizations, sometimes even more so than for larger organizations. We speak with long-time BCM expert Alex Jankovic, who helps us identify what some of these key challenges are and why they are concerns for small organizations; from the program initation phase to implementation to the ongoing maintenance phase. Alex also talks to us about some of the solutions available to small organizations that can be leveraged to help address the BCM challenges.
May 9, 2019 • 55min
The Cure for Catastrophe: Stop Manufacturing Natural Disasters
Sometimes we manufacture our own negative situations because we don't pay attention to risk. We speak with Professor, Global Risk Expert and author, Robert Muir-Wood about his book 'The Cure for Catastrophe - How We Can Stop Manufacturing Natural Disasters'. We'll discuss how we create some of our own consequences with regards to natural disasters and define a true natural disaster. We'll hear about examples from around the globe how we have responded positively to disaster occurrences, yet how we still need to learn so much more from our hazard landscape. Disaster Risk Reduction is a major topic in the world right now, and this episode is sure to provide some valuable insight into how we can plan and prepare responsibly to reduce disaster impacts.
Apr 25, 2019 • 56min
Organizational Resilience
Organizational Resilience is a hot topic in the Business Continuity industry today. For this episode we talk with renowned global experts and authors of 'Organizational Resilience: Managing the Risks of Disruptive Events' Dr. Marc Siegel and Dr. James Leflar. We discuss what Organizational Resiliency is and how it benefits an organization, using a risk management based approach. We'll talk about Risk Committees/Councils and how they can help bring various organization disciplines such as BCM, DR, Audit, Quality Control etc. together to help build the resiliency within an organization. We'll also talk about the key component to any resilient organization - people. This is a very informative episode that will help you understand just exactly what Organizational Resiliency is and how to start your organization on a path of resiliency.
Apr 18, 2019 • 54min
A New Approach to Disaster Education
To ensure our messages on disaster are received and understood by the appropriate audiences, we need to think about New Approaches to Disaster Education. We speak with education expert, researcher and environmental and disaster hazard expert, Neil Dufty. Neil will talk to us about the best ways to develop and manage disaster communication awareness and how to identify our various audiences - or learners. He will also help us understand some of the challenges we face in education and awareness, providing some helpful take-home pointers to help us with our own education activities. Neil will share with us some of his own personal experiences with disasters in Australia.
Apr 11, 2019 • 54min
Crisis Management: How to Develop a Powerful Program
Navigating through a crisis successfully is something all organizations must be able to do, unfortunately that isn't always the case. This is because they haven't developed a strong Crisis Management program. We speak with internationally recognized expert Regina Phelps, to discuss her latest book 'Crisis Management: How to Develop a Powerful Program'. We'll talk about how to build a great teams and how to identify team members to ensure executive support. We'll also talk about roles and responsibilities and something that all team members need to be provided if they are to be successful. We'll also talk about how to validate the team and team structure using exercises and how we can execute exercises successfully. This is guarnateed to be an informative talk about Crisis Management and Crisis Management Teams.
Apr 4, 2019 • 55min
Association of Continuity Professionals ACP
The Association of Continuity Professionals (ACP) is Not-For-Profit organization with the vision of being the world's premier association of resiliency professionals. Our guest is the National Board Chairperson for the ACP, Mr. Scott Ream. Scott will provide us an overview of the organization, its vision for the future and its curent mission, including the benefits of membership, its partnerships and its various chapters. Scott also provides some great insight on some of the key challenges facing Continuity and Resiliency professionals today. You can contact ACP International by email at staff@acp-international.com or by phone at +1.800.445.4227.
Mar 21, 2019 • 55min
Live From Disaster Recovery Journal Conference 2018 - Hour 5
This is hour 5 (final hour) of the live broadcast from September 24/18.
Mar 14, 2019 • 56min
Information Security - Part 1
For Business Continuity / Disaster Planning programs to be truly effective and meet the needs of organizations, they need to work with other organization programs. This week we will focus on Information Security and Privacy with recognized InfoSec expert, Jason Maynard. We will learn the various ways in which organizations can be compromised through various threats and attacks from physical/site threats to Malware to Social Engineering. Jason will provide some valuable insights on how to recognize these malicious threats and how complex and sophisticated criminals have become. We'll also learn what we need to do to ensure our organizations don't get compromised, as well as what we can do at home. Jason will even tell us about his own experiences with a Microsoft call that turned out to be a scam.
Mar 7, 2019 • 56min
Testing and Exercising: Beyond Tabletops
For any organization, validating their Business Continuity, Crisis Management, IT Disaster Recovery Plan and Emergency Response Plans - among others - it paramount. The problem often encountered due to resource availability, time and costs, is that many organizations rely on the Tabletop exercise to validate their protocols. Thought valuable, an organization must see beyond the Tabletop. We speak with Master Exercise Planner (MEP) and recent DRJ Fall 2018 conference speaker, Joe Bechtold, who will talk about different kinds of exercises and the value they provide organizations. Joe will also talk to use about how to design an exercise from determing the goals and objectives to how we evaluate activities during the exercise to documenting exercise findings. Joe will provide us with ideas and insight, as to how we can improve our validation capabilities and ensure our exercises provide the best value to our organization.
