Convergence

Not having the budget to trek down under to hear Ken Simpson’s presentation to the BCI Summit, I have settled for the next best thing…I reviewed his slide deck at Contemplating.

As with my previous post on a Profession in Transition, Ken subtly (at least without a script or speaker’s notes it appears subtle) suggests that EM and BCM are converging. I work at a rather complex level service delivery and I can tell you that when we examined our maturing BCM program it led to a similar convergence. So much so that Emergency Managers are cross training as Business Continuity Managers and taking ownership of the whole BCM program as a sub-component of the Disaster Management program.

This was done when it appeared to the EM world that BCM seemed to be satisfied once the plan was written. In fairness the task of developing a BCM program in our organization was enormous and as a result the focus was tended to be on compliance. This level of satisfaction was seen as complacency which frightened the Emergency Management crowd; you know the ones who see cascading effects around every corner and seem to want to push the dynamic nature of disasters (wicked problems) on the BCM planners.

It has yet to be tested, but it would appear that though this example of convergence, we paid attention to the techniques and processes of BCM while applying the more general concepts of EM to the finished BCM plans.