Resilience planning for business continuity: lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war

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A niche product development company from the Recognize portfolio of companies faced a serious risk to its business and employees in late 2021. Some employees were based in Ukraine, and the management team faced a series of adverse events. As the company was growing rapidly, it was easy to ignore the events and focus on the core business. Understandably, many players in the technology services ecosystem in Ukraine did just that. However, the Recognize team in New York saw things differently and took the events and the risks to the company and its employees very seriously from the start.

What follows is a series of lessons we learned while leading the company’s resilience plan, working with management and functional leaders to build a robust plan that included hours of meetings where we went over minute details of activities to ensure the company was prepared for war.

Believe it will happen and prepare for the worst case scenario

Most business continuity plans are reasonably good, but they lack one aspect. They assume that the worst case scenario is unlikely. An event with the most severe impact and a very low probability of occurrence is acknowledged but rarely considered and planned for. This leads to certain loose threads that become gaping holes when the most severe threat level occurs.

Of course, we hoped for the best, but we were also prepared for the worst. We made sure we played through all scenarios and planned mitigations for each one. The result was a solid resilience plan with less ambiguity and no detail was overlooked.

Listen more to people you disagree with

When we conducted the planning exercise, there were many opposing views. Some people opposed the idea of ​​any disruption. Others, who were concerned about possible war-related disruption, had very specific ideas about what dangers would arise, but insisted that widespread or severe disruption was out of the question.

Read also – The economic consequences of the war

Working with a broad group of people can help in at least two ways. First, you get to know the mindset of the teams on the ground and the true pulse of the business. Second, you get a broader perspective on the underlying hurdles and issues that may otherwise go unnoticed in resilience planning. For example, when we conducted scenario planning for the evacuation of our employees and their families, we initially did not plan for elderly people with limited or no mobility or family pets.

Employees are the real decision makers

No matter how strong the resilience plan is, the mindset of individuals plays a big role. If teams are not convinced, they will simply ignore the plan. You need buy-in from individuals to take the resilience plan from strategy to actual implementation in crisis mode. Don’t ignore individuals’ mindsets and personal preferences. It’s important to stay connected, engage with teams, and make sure you gain credibility with each of them.

You may be the lonely shepherd

When creating a resilience plan, be prepared to swim against the tide. There may be no other companies or players in the ecosystem that share the same views on potential risks. You may be alone and have to spend a lot of time and effort to create your resilience plan. Sometimes your own team may resist the inaction of other companies or the belief that resilience planning reduces bandwidth that (in their eyes) would be better spent competing in the market. Companies can also learn some lessons from fairy tales. The three little pigs are a good example of this.

Be aware that you have very little control during the event

You can create a resilience plan, just as professional coaches create a game plan before a big game. As in sports, detailed planning is helpful, but once the game begins, players must remain emotionally resilient and ready to respond to events, most of which were not anticipated. To enable individuals to make quick and efficient decisions in the face of uncertainty, organizations must adopt a culture of agility and have strong training programs in place.

Also read – Private companies value continuity and stability: Megha Chawla

For us, the most important decision at the time was to make caring for the portfolio company’s employees and business a management priority. It was a truly remarkable time for the company, as the values ​​of “resilience and agility” that the management team had committed to long before the war began (and indeed long before there were any signs of a wider war) made a critical difference to the company’s most important asset – its people. The company’s call to action, and to act early, made a huge difference to its employees and their families. Not only did most employees move to safer locations, but this also helped them move early enough to ensure that their lives and those of their families were saved and that they were not subjected to unimaginable stress and hardship as they tried to navigate the dangerous roads to get to safer locations across the country. The result was that the company and its employees remained resilient and relevant to their customers.

Over the last two years, the company has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of revenue and number of employees. Although the company could have gone completely down the drain by both metrics when war broke out in 2022, we not only remained resilient and survived the war, but we also thrived and prospered.

Muthu Kumaran is the Managing Partner of Recognize.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are those of the author.