One of the lesser-quoted laws of Murphy states, “If you explain something so clearly that no one can misunderstand it, somebody will”. I was reminded of this when I read some of the alternative terms suggested for “Business Continuity” in the recent Globalcontinuity.com survey. According to the published figures, 1189 responses were received with only 21% saying ‘no’ to using the term Business Continuity. In my book this means that just 250 people voted ‘no’. I counted the number of alternative suggestions as 117 with the highest score being Business Continuity Management (hardly a ‘no’ vote at all) with 10. The next highest scores were Disaster Recovery (8) and Crisis Management (8). Business Recovery, Contingency Planning and Operational Risk Management scored 7 each. The rest of the suggestions could be broadly grouped into sub-sets of each of the above plus a batch of terms which were purely I.T. management issues.

I suppose the good news is that if you include the term Business Continuity Management (which the BCI supports), then Business Continuity was voted for by 949 – a useful working majority over Disaster Recovery at 8.

As the entire industry has spent the last 10 years telling everyone who would listen not to call it Disaster Recovery, my recollection of a long forgotten “law” is perhaps understandable. Until I read this survey, however, there were three things I thought everyone agreed on. These were:

Business Continuity was much wider (and had replaced) Disaster Recovery.

Business Continuity was much more than technology, systems or IT recovery.

Crisis Management was only a small sub-set of Business Continuity.

In fact there is a wide consensus that until we dissociate ourselves from the negativity of Disasters or Crises (things going wrong) and emphasis the positive aspects of Continuity (things going right) we can never turn BCM into a serious top-level management discipline. Similarly, if we wish to see BCM on the Board’s strategic agenda we are not going to do so by concentrating on System Availability and technical solutions to system recovery. This is not to denigrate the tremendous work many IT DR specialists undertake but is not really the point when discussing Business Continuity.

What disappointed me in some of the comments was the failure of some respondents to understand the basis for Business Continuity. I expected some brand new terms to be suggested which tried to describe an umbrella subject for Emergency, Crisis, Risk, Recovery and Contingency. In fact the suggestions indicated to me that many people still sit in those individual islands of knowledge and felt that BCM was only about what they did. Their suggestions simply described their view of their part of the entire BCM process.

When I started in this business some 17 years ago, I hoped that Continuity Planning would become the de-facto terminology for this umbrella of different sub-disciplines. Hence the name of my company (Continuity Planning Associates), which was formed in 1985. This was considered odd at the time because Disaster Recovery was still in vogue as a term. The addition of “Business” in the early 90’s was a double-edged sword, largely to try and set the subject apart of Computer Disaster Recovery. It did, however, by implication exclude organisations which were not really businesses in the conventional sense like hospitals, councils, universities and charities. However these bodies now all like to talk in business terms so the distinction has become largely irrelevant.

I recall a conversation with another BCM/BCP/DPR veteran, Jim Burtles, back in 1988 when he argued fiercely that the industry was confused enough with terms such as Disaster Planning, Emergency Planning and Contingency Planning. He felt the last thing it needed was a new term like Continuity Planning to add to the confusion. Luckily Jim was eventually convinced and has long since been one of BCM most passionate advocates.

My view, and I think that of the BCI, is that the term Business Continuity Management is still in fact the name that covers all the related disciplines. The wider use of the term Risk Management within Corporate Governance concepts has challenged that assumption to some extent but I think it is still valid. We do not see ourselves purely as solution providers for risks identified elsewhere. Business Continuity is not a synonym for Disaster Recovery, Business Recovery or Crisis Management.

I do feel, however, that the artificial boundary between Risk Management and Business Continuity does need to be addressed. I think Risk and Continuity are two sides of the same coin and the fact that the words “Business Continuity” did not appear once in the Turnbull Report (for example) did in some ways harm the value of that piece of work. In an excellent article published recently in Globalcontinuity.com John Robinson favourably contrasted the positive approach of the US national Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) who identified the need for viable Business Continuity Plans with the academic, pedantic approach of Turnbull. I recently chaired a BCM conference in Amsterdam at which a number of German delegates complained that the German approach to corporate governance and risk was going nowhere fast. It was bogged down in procedure and red tape, as is Turnbull.

Business Continuity may not be the only way to describe what we do and why we do it, but it does have the benefit of being clear, simple and not full of academic jargon. As a name, it is the only “game in town” so lets stick with it. Return to Menu...