Six Reasons Why Your Disaster Plan Will Fail

Many people don’t do their part in disaster planning committees. This can cause the planning process to stretch indefinitely into the future and deliver negligible results. Of course, everyone is sorry when disaster strikes and preventable problems happen, but before the disaster there are so many reasons why planning should occur at some later time. These reasons include fear, embarrassment, denial and overconfidence. Here’s our advice.

By Guy Robertson

Guy Robertson is a senior planner at TMC and an instructor at the Justice Institute of BC and Langara College. He has written five books and numerous articles on corporate security and disaster planning, and offered workshops and lectures at conferences across North America and in the UK.

Apathy

Apathy is defined as a lack of interest, enthusiasm or concern. In the field of disaster planning, we define apathy as a lack of sufficient interest, enthusiasm or concern where obstacles to proper planning are more important than the agreed need to plan. We regularly encounter six of these variations of apathy:

Routine—According to the manager of an engineering firm in Los Angeles: “If my staff members take time away from their usual work to serve on a [disaster planning and security] committee, they complain about falling behind on ordinary stuff.”

“As a consequence, our plan is very basic, and does not address all of the risks that prevail in our organization. It has taken us years to reach this point. I have no idea how long it will take us to develop a comprehensive plan.”

Fear—While professional disaster planners become accustomed to considering the loss of life and assets, other people might try to ignore such unpleasant matters as the concepts make them nervous.

Not My Job—Should a disaster occur and disrupt operations, many employees assume that they should step aside and allow “the experts” to put everything right.

Embarrassment—People worry that in discussing risks, they might appear foolish or “alarmist”. Corporate culture can discourage outlandish thinking, even though this can include serious potential risks.

A discussion of shelving collapsing and killing someone is judged to be somewhat ridiculous. Even people with a real interest in risk mitigation can be silenced if colleagues won’t take them seriously.

Disbelief—It can be difficult for staff members to believe that disasters could occur on or near their sites. Offices are not nearly as dangerous as manufacturing plants, mines, or municipal works yards. “If a natural disaster should occur, it can’t be planned for so staff would just stay home.”

Misplaced Confidence—People tend to over-confidence. It is impossible to predict the future, but it is usually safe to assume that a disaster will not strike any time soon, if at all.

Our Advice

Our experience has led us to downplay discussions of “Hollywood” scenarios as this results in push-back from attendees. We have learned to focus the planning on the more mundane; for example, storms causing power outages, excavation errors causing loss of phone and internet communications, and roof leaks causing equipment and paper file damage etc.

TMC’S

ADVISOR

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