Book review: The Resilient Enterprise
I'm currently enjoying another book by one of my favourite tech authors: Yossi Sheffi's The Resilient Enterprise*. As always, Yossi spins a good yarn, illustrating a strong and convincing argument with interesting, relevant examples leading to sound advice.
Specifically, I'm intrigued by the notion that major incidents/disasters leading to severe business disruption may not come "out of the blue". Sometimes (quite often?), there are little warning signs, hints ahead of time about the impending crisis, chances for alert business people to look up from the daily grind and perhaps brace for impact. It ought to be possible to spot fragile supply chains, processes, systems and people, provided we are looking out for them ...
Here in NZ at the moment, we are being treated to a public safety campaign using the analogy of meerkats, encouraging Kiwis to be constantly on the alert for signs of danger, thinking ahead and hopefully avoiding accidents rather than taking silly chances. It makes sense.
So I'm thinking perhaps we should update our template policies on incident reporting and/or incident management to encourage workers to report early warning signs, troubling concerns or situations early, before they turn into actual incidents (which also need to be reported, of course). It's a nice example of the value of security awareness.
PS I reviewed another of Yossi's books: The Power of Resilience