Are You Ready for Disaster?
Posted On: 2007-10-24
Steve and I have the very good fortune to live in one of the most beautiful parts of Australia. The climate is wonderful all year round, we're only minutes from a placid bay where we can swim, fish, dive and sail 12 months of the year, there are palm trees and beautiful song birds and it really is a wonderful place to live.
But yesterday, when the mail was delivered, we were reminded that even this wonderful part of the country has its down side. You see, along with the ordinary mail that was delivered there was also this year's storm and cyclone survival guide. Yep, that's right, we have tropical cyclones and we're already a month into cyclone season ... and we've had one major storm that was close to a category one cyclone.
So we're prepared; we know what we have to do if a serious cyclone comes this way. We have our evacuation kit ready and our business is ready to move with a few hours notice too.
Of course a serious cyclone may never come in our lifetime ... although the odds of that are slim ... but on the other hand one could blow up quite quickly so it pays to be ready. Are you ready if a natural ... or even man made disaster ... strikes your home and your business? Do you have plans in place to deal with problems when they arise?
Or do you just hope that nothing bad will ever happen to you?
Sadly the chances of getting through your business life without facing at least one major disaster is about as remote as the chance of a major cyclone ever hitting this town. You could try to fool yourself into thinking that all your careful planning will prevent those serious problems arising but quite frankly that's just being delusional.
There's nothing wrong with planning carefully to avoid problems but it really doesn't matter how carefully you plan, there are always areas of your business that you have less control over and that could quite easily be the place where disaster strikes.
Last week friends of ours who run a very successful online store lost many thousands of dollars worth of orders when the Post Office misplaced two mail bags that contained a lot of the parcels they had sent out to customers. Now that's an area of our friends' business that they have almost zero control over and it's going to cost them a lot of money. Not only have they lost all the stock that they must replace but now they have a bunch of unhappy customers to deal with as well.
So how would you handle a disaster like that? Would you be able to cope if your bottom line took a hit of that magnitude? Have you even considered where problems like this could arise in your business ... whatever your business might be?
And if you have considered where problems might arise have you bothered to work out some contingency plans to deal with the problems?
When everything is sailing along smoothly and you're making plenty of money the very last thing you want to think about is how to deal with major problems ... but that's the very time you do need to start making plans. You need to be making your plans then because that's when you can think clearly and make rational and considered decisions.
When you're up to your neck in a disaster and everyone around you is screaming at you for answers your ability to make sensible decisions is vastly reduced and instead of fixing the problem you could quite easily make it a whole lot worse. That's why you need to make your plans now so that they're in place and can be put into action when the sky starts to fall.
Ok so you want to make some contingency plans ... but what do you plan for?
Well in this industry start thinking about what you would do if your server goes down or your host disappears. Do you have backups of all your sites that you could quickly upload? Even if your host keeps backups of all your important databases do you keep them too?
What would you do if your work computers were stolen? What would you do if your major sponsor cut you out of the program and accused you of cheating?
What would your contingency plan be if you were to fall ill and not be able to produce new sites and galleries for a week or more? What would you do if a storm or fire swept through your neighborhood and even if your house survived you had no power for several days?
You also need to identify the weakest link in your business ... that one spot where you have little or no control yet your success is totally dependant on things going right. How do you gain more control of that weak link or what can you do to lessen the effect it might have on your business?
Think about all those things and develop some plans to deal with any problems that may arise and you will have some hope of survival. Pretend that the bad things will never happen and one day we all might find that we have one less competitor in this industry.