EaaS Consulting, LLC

Check out the May/June issue of SUCCESS Magazine with Tony Robbins on the cover -- you might find two pages featuring some #businesscontinuity advice from yours truly! Thank you to Lisa Beach and Kerrie Lee Brown! #SUCCESS #SUCCESSmagazine #businessresilience #businessgrowth #businessowner

Round 3! The Lunchtime Game Night Snack Attack is back after a vacation break. Registration link in the comments below. Who doesn't love a game night, but during lunch when it's work-related...and still give you the time to eat something? In 30-40 minutes, this monthly interactive event will help you assess your confidence level in your business's ability to survive and thrive when operations are threatened with disruption in a safe and fun environment. The events that test your operations acumen will change each time we come together. See how you fare! Secure. Survive. Thrive. #businesscontinuity #businessresilience #businessgrowth #security #businessowner #prepared #exercise

One thing I know - from being a lawyer - is about #regulatorycompliance. A lot of times, compliance with the law is often a tick-the-box. "Yes, we are doing X. Yes, we are refraining from doing Y. We are good to go!" Most people don't think about the fact you can always go above and beyond what is required. Is complying with the regulation doing the bare minimum? Is it the right amount? Here's my very lawyer answer: it depends. A lot of times plain compliance is enough - and I will tell that to clients. Sometimes, though, doing better than a C is almost a moral obligation. Think about regulations for working conditions thanks to #OSHA - the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They exist to keep working conditions safe for employees. You may be required to give a certain amount of breaks in a day, but when conditions - like a heatwave - change, the bare minimum is not enough. I wrote about Amazon (a few times) in my book taking them to task. They are notorious for doing the bare minimum to comply with OSHA. Need an emergency management plan? Check! Oh, but it's a plan that only accounts for a hurricane and we're talking about a warehouse in rural southern Illinois? Where a tornado killed 8 Amazon warehouse employees? Yeah...not enough at all. Way to phone it in. You know...even some regulations say you need to have a #businesscontinuity plan. I've seen them phoned in. They won't work. They make the auditor go away but they don't actually save your business. When it comes to not just your investment, but your clients' trust and your employees' way of life, more than the bare minimum should be expected, not the exception. Be exceptional and reap the benefits. Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more on this and other topics, visit the blog on the EaaS website and subscribe. #businessresilience #businessgrowth #businessowner #smallbusiness

Some advice is timeless. David Seabury wrote The Art of Selfishness in 1937. I finished it while on vacation last week and the chapter "How to Avoid a Crisis" naturally perked up my #businesscontinuity antenna. 1️⃣ "Stop to think, dare to act." Yes, take that step. I always say it is never too late to learn what you wish you knew earlier. You see the problem, address it. 2️⃣ "Belief that money is absolute, so one can't afford to act." [first of the Twelve Causes of Failure] Business continuity mostly takes time and effort. Also you can't afford to not act in a lot of instances. 3️⃣ "Habit of yielding when the "hard place" arrives." [sixth of the Twelve Causes of Failure] #businessowners do NOT have to be victims. Prepare instead of repair - it's a lot cheaper. Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more hot takes like this, visit the EaaS social media pages @dontkillyourbusiness on tiktok and instagram. #businessresilience #businessgrowth #smallbusiness

The Titanic sinking is a great example of ambitious assumptions, cutting corners, and lack of training...all things #businesscontinuity tries to save you from. The Titanic was thought to be unsinkable. The White Star Line decided for aesthetics and unobstructed views, they would have only 20 lifeboats on the ship which - if all used and all filled at max capacity (neither happened) - could accommodate a hair over half the passengers. The number of boats did comply with maritime regulations at the time but they were outdated, not conceiving of a passenger ship that large. The Titanic's crew was poorly trained on using the lifeboat launching equipment. Because of this, boats were slowly launched and poorly supervised allowing many of the lifeboats to leave half empty. 1,503 people died in the sinking of the Titanic. I always say an issue facing #businessowners is a bit of hubris in thinking nothing is going to happen to them or everything will go according to their plan. Here is a picture from Fairview Lawn Cemetary in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I was a week ago on vacation. Since it was the closest location to the sinking, bodies were retrieved and buried here. The number is the order in which the body was taken out of the water. Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more on #businessresilience topics, visit the blog on the EaaS website and subscribe.

We're still just over a month out from #cybersecurity awareness month (October), but that doesn't mean I save all the lessons until then. One of the things that keeps the C-suite up at night is #phishing. I learned about a newer threat: Phishing with DocuSign lead to a Business Email Compromise (BEC). Part 1 - Criminals buy a realistic template from the dark web. Once they send a phishing email with the template asking for a log-in, they get the credentials which gives them access to confidential information like contracts, financial statements and purchase agreements. Part 2 - The criminal attaches one of those internal documents to create a convincing BEC email to trick target into carrying out a sensative action...like wiring money. What's very tricky is the attachment is legitimate and adds veracity to the scam. Aside from the usual verify in person/over phone with the person sending the email, you can also limit the way people intereact with the email in Part 1 of the scheme: Use the "alternate signing methods" at the footer of the DocuSign email and go to the DocuSign website where you can copy and paste the code. If it fails, you know you avoided a phishing scam. Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more hot takes like this, visit the EaaS social media pages @dontkillyourbusiness on tiktok and instagram. #businesscontinuity #businessresilience #businessgrowth #businessowner

A shortcoming of #exercises... I had a leader regale me with his #management style regarding when employees came in to complain. Them: “I’m mad!” Him: “I get that you’re mad, but are you outraged?” They were normally just mad and realized it wasn’t that bad. Similarly, any kind of #disaster or #disruption needs the same question back and forth: “The systems are down!” “How down?” It is key to understanding the scale and scope of a problem. It helps you with knowing when to activate the plan or sit it out and wait. Exercises do very little with this query: the assumption is we’re activating the plan. There is a missed opportunity here to practice the authority to say “Go.” There are other assumptions that exercises fail to consider. The main one being that when you test the plan, you’re the only one with the issue, the only one calling for help. You won’t be if it’s a regional disaster. You won’t be the only one the building manager has to respond to, or AWS has to deal with, or EMS has to show up for. Sometimes there are bigger problems to solve. Some of my fellow BC professionals will joke about “well, if X happened, there will be bigger problems to solve than getting X back online,” like taking care of themselves and their families, but I don’t think any of them are having the conversation with their companies about that. I like the idea of planning out this doomsday scenario and what can we do for the month you won’t have this capability to make sure you at least have some money coming in. That’s what I’m supposed to do, right? Secure. Survive. Thrive. For much more on this and other topics, visit the blog on the EaaS website and subscribe. #businesscontinuity #businessresilience #businessgrowth #preparedness #businessowner #smallbusiness

Sticking with the mixing #businesscontinuity with atomic theme for the week...Broken Arrows. A broken arrow is a name for a nuclear weapons accident. Of the 32 broken arrow incidents that involved the US’s nuclear arsenal, none of them resulted in even a partial detonation. Why? Because of all the redundant safety features. #Redundancy matters. Single points of failure will do in any chance at success no matter what the end goal is... Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more hot takes like this, visit the EaaS social media pages on tiktok and instagram @dontkillyourbusiness. #businessresilience #businessgrowth #businessowner #smallbusiness

When failing to practice the main ideas of #businesscontinuity turned out to be a good thing... I’m going to give you an example of something you are glad – very glad – failed. It’s the German Atomic Bomb Program under Hitler. I’m really going there.   Uranium fission was discovered in Berlin in 1938. In 1939 the German armed forces established an office to study the military use of nuclear fission. Once Germany started WWII, it took advantage of the great spoils to advance their own atomic research – a source of heavy water, uranium compounds, and a half-built cyclotron. By 1941 they were winning the nuclear race. Eventually the British and US scientists took this discovery – and the fear the Germans would use it first – to start the Manhattan Project in 1942.   With this much a lead-time, how did the Germans fail? - The bomb program was not a priority. They were more interested in quick victories than long-term gains. [Replace “bomb” with “business continuity” and re-read that] - There was never cohesive leadership and it was fraught by internal conflicts. [Leadership buy-in in key to business continuity as well as silos being porous/working together] - Lack of resources due to bad economy and Allied bombing. [Business continuity only really takes an investment of time and effort] - Focus on other physics over experimental physics. [This is the hesitant business owner focusing on the what-we-know vs what-could-be-possible] - The lead scientist made a scientific error due to misconceptions about an explosive chain reaction and nuclear fission. [‘I’ll be fine, it won’t happen to me. What really is the risk?”]   The world got lucky Germany failed to do some basic things that would have led to their Atomic Bomb Program’s success. The simple things I listed came directly from a display I took a picture of in the National Museum of Atomic Energy and History (see below).   Each one of those things are common reasons business owners use for not doing business continuity. Each one of these things are short-sighted barriers to ultimate success.   Business continuity is a competitive advantage. The very principles that allow you to succeed and get ahead of your competition are the very ones that leave them putting up the closed sign when they don't do them (sometimes for the best). Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more on this and other topics, visit the blog on the EaaS website and subscribe. #businessgrowth #businessowner

#climate issues keep finding new ways to interrupt the #supplychain. The latest? Delivery truck storage compartments overheating. 🥵 Why you should care. A lot. I experienced an issue last week (I'm easing into why you care). I had a perishable order arrive with 2-day shipping in a foil bag with cold packs in it. As soon as I opened the foil, it felt hot - not cold, not room temp - hot inside. I opened the packaging of my item and it was melted. I was able to get a refund. But that was marshmallows. What about something more serious? Like mail to order prescription drugs? 💊 Boom. didn't want to hit you hard to start. Read most any information packet that comes with medicines and the storage temp usually tops out at 77 degrees. There is a reason for this- to maintain the integrity of the medicine. Can you imagine using cloudy insulin? Are you sure your inhailer will work after the pressure in the canister has been altered? If it's been heated for too long...☠️ UPS delivery trucks are metal boxes without air-conditioning (different from their shipping trucks). USPS delivery trucks are the same. Heat waves have been a consistent issue. Despite precautions, cargo areas of trucks reach over 150 degrees. The wine industry knows this, which is why vineyards won't ship wine in certain months. 🍷 Medicine is different. It can't wait for the temps to be cooler.🕚 So what are we doing to fix it as we (rightly) make medicine cheaper and easier to get via mail to order? I have a few ideas... Secure. Survive. Thrive. For more hot takes like this, visit the EaaS tiktok and IG pages (@dontkillyourbusiness) #businesscontinuity #businessresilience #businessgrowth #prescriptions #shipping #businessowner