Life Discipline: Who will you Become-I.?

 As our marvelous Sun sets before us this day, the full Moon was rising in the East.

Our United States citizens are anxious, only days away from our next National elections.

You too as an American, can choose your mind set and your own future destiny.

What have you done today or this week, to learn more about your particular craft, trade skill or subject matter expertise?

How might you use this new learning to help yourself, your family or your particular team or neighborhood congregation prosper?

What will you “DO” this week, that will advance your accomplishment of new found outcomes.  New ideas or solutions to worthy problems.  New rewards, for your time and efforts to succeed?

Who shall you devote more time with in the days and months ahead, to build even higher levels of “Trust,” new areas of collaboration and to increase your mutual returns?

If you may achieve valuable outcomes in your personal or business profession, you may have heard people say, that you have to have a real passion for it.

Yet there is another vital skill you must acquire and utilize each week.

Definition of discipline
1a : control gained by enforcing obedience or order
b : orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior
c : self-control

When you think about where you are in your life right now, discipline has been a major factor.

How do the people you know, describe you to others?  Think about it.

What is certain about your future, is that your own willful discipline, will make a difference.  How will you make a contribution today?

For Yourself.  For your Loved Ones.  For your Country…

Continuous Continuity (C2): BCCM 24/7...

Corporate Directors charged with Operational Risk Management oversight are ultimately responsible for Continuous Continuity (C2) of the Enterprise.

The modern enterprise that effectively manages the myriad of potential threats to its people, processes, systems and critical infrastructures stands to be better equipped for sustained continuity. A Business Crisis and Continuity Management (BCCM) program is a dynamic change management initiative that requires dedicated resources, funding and auditing. Corporate Directors must scrutinize organizational survivability on a global basis.

Since effective BCCM analysis is a 24/7 operation, it takes a combination of factors across the organization to provide what one might call C2, or "Continuous Continuity". A one-time threat or risk assessment or even an annual look at what has changed across the enterprise is opening the door for a Board of Directors worst nightmare. These nightmares are "Loss Events" that could have been prevented or mitigated all together.

According to the risk management best practices from sources such as the Turnbull Report and specifically Principle 13 of the Basel II Capital Accord, the Board of Directors and corporate management are responsible for the effectiveness of the Business Crisis and Continuity Management of an organization. The following testing techniques must be used to ensure the continuity plan can be executed in a real-life emergency:

• Table-top testing: Discussing how business recovery arrangements would react by using example interruptions.
• Simulations: Training individuals by simulating a crisis and rehearsing their post-incident/crisis management roles.
• Technical recovery testing: Testing to ensure information systems can be restored effectively
• Testing recovery at an alternate site: Running business processes in parallel with recovery operations at an off-site location.
• Test of supplier facilities and services: Ensuring externally provided services and products will meet the contract requirements in the case of interruptions.
• Complete rehearsals: Testing to ensure the organization, employees, equipment, facilities and processes can cope with interruptions.

Many of these best practices talk about a BCCM that will be periodically updated. Periodic is not continuous. Change is the key factor here. What changes take place in your organization between these periodic updates? How could any organization accurately account for all the changes to the organization in between BCCM updates? The fact is that they can’t.

This will change over time as organizations figure out that this is now as vital a business component as supply chain management. The effective BCCM framework will become a core process within the organization if it is not already, dynamically evolving by the minute as new change-based factors take place in the enterprise. As new or terminated employees, suppliers and partners come and go into the BCCM process, the threat profile is updated in real-time. This takes the operational management that much closer to C2 , or "Continuous Continuity".

Having survived several large quakes in Southern California in years past, we are not sure that all of the testing in the world can prepare people for human behaviors that come from within. People literally lose all sense of common sense when you are on the 42nd floor of the 50+ sky scraper and without any warning it physically sways a couple feet to the left and a few more feet to the right. Believe me, the issue is not the testing itself, it’s how to create a real enough scenario that you get similar behaviors out of unsuspecting people. Certainly the largest organizations realize that the external threats are taking on new and different forms than the standard fire, flood, earthquake and twister scenarios.

These historically large catastrophic external loss events have been insured against and the premiums are substantial. What it is less easy to analyze from a threat perspective are the constantly changing landscapes and continuity postures of the internal facets of the organization having to do with people, processes and systems. Corporate Boards of Director’s are now being consistently subjected to regulatory scrutiny across the globe to ensure the continuity and survivability of the enterprise. It is their duty and responsibility to their shareholders to make sure this occurs on a continuous basis. The world can only hope that our Global 500 companies are well on their way to achieving C2 already.

Organizational Integrity: Leadership of Risk…

As a leader in your organization, how long have you truly demonstrated the actions you desire for those who are following you?

Countless times each day, leaders in the global race to the finish line, ignore or disavow the rules or policies they enforce for their own team.

What are you demonstrating in your organization today and this week to build “Organizational Integrity”?

How are your own behaviors in the midst of your team, showing and reinforcing the actions that will build and activate a model of “Organizational Integrity”?

integrity
noun

in· teg· ri· ty | \ in-ˈte-grə-tē

Definition of integrity

1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility
2 : an unimpaired condition : soundness
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : completeness

Why have you made the decisions that you are more privileged than the others on your team?

Is it your personal sense of ego or power as a figure of authority, that makes you feel as if the activities and rules for you, do not apply or are different than for those who are on the front lines?

They are not.  In the midst of a legal deposition or worse, the leader who is charged, explains their own behaviors.  This is now beyond the point of no return.

Even when you are behind closed doors of the “Board Room” or the “Ready Room,” are you demonstrating the same behavior and adherence to the processes, that you wish upon all those you are leading?

Leadership of your “Executive” Team or a “Squad of Specialists” in the field, requires people who truly “Walk-the-Talk” and adhere to the same standards or rules set forth for the entire organizational operations.

You already are known as a “Leader” in your area of expertise.

Yet are you known as a leader with “Integrity,” that truly demonstrates this in the middle of your operations each day?

Life Journey: Exploration of Trust…

 As the morning sun began to rise, the blue Pacific was in a calm mood today.  Dolphins were playing just off shore.  The fog over the 54 foot deck had now evaporated.

What about another journey of exploration and discovery, even after six decades of experience?

A “Leadership Professional” that is always moving ahead, means you are consistently looking for new destinations.

It is imperative that you are working on the growth value of relationships.  Without these key attributes, you will at some point navigate off-course.

Without a continuous focus on exploring new levels of reward and returns, you will soon lose your ambition to persevere.  Without trusted and growing relationships, you will become isolated from the power of Trust.

Your skills that are utilized to gain virtual wealth, shall be leveraged to grow your portfolio of trusted people.  Those who will follow you, shall learn from you and will long to hear and see more of your particular wisdom.

The challenges in your life will be many and each with their own degree of disruption.

Yet it will be the trusted person to your left, or seconds away by that digital device in your hand, that will make all the difference.

How might you make a difference today, to grow the wealth of a valued relationship?

What have you demonstrated as evidence of your abilities or knowledge, to ensure greater levels of Trust?

How might you practice a knew learned skill, to enhance the wealth of your endeavor?

Of your mutual mission.

Now you are well on your way to finding it.  From a relationship with “No Trust,” to the other end of the spectrum, where “Trust” is implicit.

You will not even think about it any longer…