Brilliant common sense, from someone whos been there and done it.
Rob Osborn, business continuity consultant, Osborn BC
Really entertaining, informative and easy to read, as I expected it would be, having read many of Andys publications previously.
Sarah Cotterill, global head of business continuity management, Computacenter
A great contribution to BCP realism written by someone with a sense of reality of what actually goes on, and achieved with real insight and a touch of humour.
Mark Mahoney, business continuity professional
Whod have thought Practical Business Continuity 2 would have been such a page-turner. Great job!
Nigel Mortimer, consultant, Trustmarque
A well written no nonsense practical guide full of tips to improve or build your own BCM capability. Andy makes complex concepts easy to understand and his considerable experience comes across as pragmatic and implementable. I strongly recommend this book to all BCM practitioners.
Rob Fletcher, head of ICT, GreenSquare Group
Andy Osbornes Practical Business Continuity Management 2 provides 101 new tips which offer business continuity professionals of all types and levels of experience genuinely useful and helpful advice. Presented in a friendly and readable style, with a keen sense of humour, the tips are structured in such a way that readers can easily dip in and out, making this an essential everyday tool, not just a read and shelve resource. Andy has a knack for simplifying areas which may be perceived as complicated and his many years of experience shine through. Highly recommended reading.
David Honour, managing editor, Continuity Central
Practical Business Continuity Management 2
101 More Tips for Effective, Real-World Business Continuity Management
Andy Osborne
Practical Business Continuity Management 2
101 More Tips for Effective, Real-World Business Continuity Management
ISBN 978-1-914209-00-0
eISBN 978-1-914209-01-7
Published in 2021 by Flying Squad Books
Andy Osborne 2021
The right of Andy Osborne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication can be accepted by the author or publisher.
Contents
About the Author
Andy Osborne is a highly experienced business continuity, risk and crisis management consultant, trainer and author. In his 20+ years as an independent consultant, he has helped well in excess of 200 clients, of all shapes and sizes, worldwide and across a broad range of industry sectors, to develop, implement, prove and maintain their business continuity, risk and crisis management capability.
He is a firm believer that a) business continuity and crisis management is about developing a capability , not simply writing a plan and b) the role of a consultant or advisor is to simplify apparently complex processes and present them in a way that is easy to understand, not the other way around.
Andy is the author of several other books, including Practical Business Continuity Management , Risk Management Simplified and the intriguingly titled ebook Ski Boots and Celery A Compilation of Ozs Business Continuity Blogs . His entertaining and amusing blogs, which link his day-to-day business and personal life experiences (often somewhat tenuously, as he is the first to admit) to business continuity, risk and crisis management themes can be read at www.acumen-bcp.co.uk/blog.
Andy lives in a semi-rural idyll near Evesham in Worcestershire (UK) with his long-suffering wife, two (allegedly) grown-up sons, one dog and assorted poultry. He is a keen gardener, beekeeper (although currently resting in the absence of any bees) and an enthusiastic, though largely untalented cricketer, hockey player, skier, golfer, guitarist and juggler. When not indulging in these pastimes he runs his consultancy business, Acumen (www.acumen-bcp.co.uk) and does the odd bit of business continuity, risk and crisis management consulting!
To contact Andy or to book him for consultancy work, training courses or speaking engagements, email him at aosborne@acumen-bcp.co.uk.
You can also follow him on Twitter (@AndyatAcumen) and/or link to him on LinkedIn (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/andyosborneatacumen). He doesnt do Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest and is unlikely to start doing so anytime soon.
Foreword
I well remember Andys original book, which I hugely enjoyed. I wondered if a new one could match the sharpness of his observations and his witty side-lines. No need to worry, this book is even better. Bang up to date with every tip showing he has been there and done it all.
In some ways, this book tells you all you really need to know about business continuity and why it doesnt always work as you might expect. My particular favourite is the people section and to paraphrase his quote machines are logical, people are emotional we all need to remember that every time we are perplexed that our elegant solution doesnt seem to work in practice.
Reading this book will probably tell you why. Better still, it will also help you not make the same mistake twice.
Lyndon Bird, Business continuity management commentator, consultant and educator
Introduction
At long last, here is the keenly awaited follow-up to Andy Osbornes popular first book, Practical Business Continuity Management , which sold many copies worldwide.
Its the distillation of almost three decades of practical experience, helping clients of all shapes and sizes in pretty much every business sector, to develop their business continuity capability.
As with the previous volume, Practical Business Continuity Management 2 wont tell you how to do business continuity management. Like its predecessor, it doesnt bang on about life cycles, methodologies, processes or best practice guidelines and it certainly doesnt wax lyrical about standards or certification.
What it does do is present you with 101 practical tips, at least some of which are almost certain to help you develop and enhance your organisations business continuity capability , helping to ensure its robustness and fitness for purpose.
The tips are grouped into relevant chapters, occasionally somewhat arbitrarily, as arguably some of the tips would sit quite happily in more than one chapter. Each chapter relates to one piece of the business continuity jigsaw.
However, as with Practical Business Continuity Management , this is not really a book thats meant to be read from start to finish. Rather, the reader is encouraged to dip in and out as the need or fancy takes them.
Specific parts of certain tips have been highlighted with the icon shown here to emphasise a particularly key point one that, in the authors opinion, is something really important that the reader should take particular note of. In most cases this opinion has been confirmed by feedback from a number of business continuity practitioners, including (though by no means limited to) those who were to review and comment on the books various drafts, one of whom referred to several of the highlighted elements as power tips.
