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Crisis does not have to be Chaotic


Sure, we get it, resilience is the new "buzz word", all of us must have the ability "to bounce back" when faced with a crisis.  You could see the eyes start to roll back in Frazzled Franks head, who always had a negative opinion.  Heck, come to think of it, Frank gives Natalie Naysayer a run for her money.  Frank, started Old Ollie, resilience is not that black and white.  Ollie, taking off his ballcap and resting his chin in the butt of his hand, started to reminisce about his days working at the refinery.  Back then, we had a process known as reliability centered maintenance.  It was pretty straightforward, take a look at the approach, rationalize what is the most important, and support your hypothesis with data.



Ollie, you are talking about maintenance and we are trying to make sure that our building is resilient; blurted Frank.  Ollie continued; the trick is the balance between what areas will have the greatest impact on your customers (revenue) and those items which you can change (span of control).  For instance, let's say your building is five stories and the elevator lands on your customer impact list.  Upon further assessment you determine that the juice may not be worth the squeeze as occupants could take the stairs.  However, when you float this idea with your tenants you discover that they hate the dimly lit stairwells, certainly an easy problem to solve.  Without significant investment this operation has become more resilient.  Thanks Ollie, that was a simple example said Frank in a sarcastic voice.  Let's talk about those items out of our control such as loss of power or water.



Frank, here are some considerations to get you started in identifying potential crisis points within your operation:

  1. Starting with the consumer or employees input, ask them; from your perspective, what is the one thing that could turn your day upside down?
  2. Organize the feedback into broad categories, whatever fits your business
  3. Once in categories, blend the feedback into themes or focus areas and score them based on impact to the customer experience (which will translate to revenue)
  4. Now, shift your way to think about the themes and go back through the categories and themes now scoring them based on your collective opinion on how much ability you have to control the crisis event 
  5. Finally, taking the scores, reorganize and start getting creative with solutions for the top three ONLY
    1. Once the top three are completed, start over again from the top



Fantastic Ollie, thank you for the logical plan.  Frank, getting outsiders involved in contemplating solutions can be a real eye-opener, often we are too close and cant see the forest for the trees.



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Next post:  from the field to the office

Thoughts?  feel free to leave replies or direct message

See all of the "last mile worker" posts here:  http://lastmileworkersolutions.com

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