Disaster Recovery Journal Winter 2022

1. You can always point to your BIA, point to your planning efforts, correlate the two – and pray for the best. 2. If a serious outage occurred and your plans were used, how much did you save the organization? However, it‘s hard to do if you have had no major plan activations. Worse yet, you had an activation that wasn‘t that bad, or you never used your plans. As time passes from your last plan activation (or perceived major threat or risk) some thing begins to happen: the executive risk appetite grows and grows. This concept is called shifting baselines. Shifting Baselines This is what is called a shifting baseline – what is it, you say? A basic definition of the phrase is “failure to notice change over time.” It was coined by Daniel Pauly in 1995 as part of the environmental move ment to describe the subtle changes which occur over time and how we personally measure biodiversity loss. For example, 100 years ago, fishing stocks around the world were abundant. As time passed, the stocks decreased more and more. And yet, each next generation looked at what was in front of them and felt the number was “normal.” This happens even today with the loss of biodiversity, weather condi tions, climate change, and more. We grow used to what is in front of us and fail to notice those changes over time.

There is no doubt you’ve heard the fable on how to boil a frog. You can’t just plunk it into a pot of boiling water like you would a lobster, because (supposedly) a frog will simply jump out to safety. As the fable goes, you put a frog in a pot of lukewarm water and he will settle into this little frog Jacuzzi. You slowly increase the heat and he becomes so relaxed it doesn’t notice the water boils him to death. This legend has been refuted many times, but that doesn’t stop the story from being retold. However, it does demon strate the idea of shifting baselines. Over time, as things change, we become accus tomed to the “new normal” and then don’t remember any other way. This is what is happening right this moment with an expanding risk tolerance. So how does that apply to our work? As we get used to more and more crises, this is what we know and how we have adapted. When I first started my practice in 1982, BCM as we know it did not exist. There was only technology recovery. The first big international crisis which turned heads was the great Mexico City earthquake in 1985, followed quickly by another in Whitter, Calif., in 1987, Loma Prieta in 1989, and Northridge in 1991. With each earthquake, awareness increased and BCM was born and thrived. Since 1991, there have been hundreds of crises, all building one on top of the

other. To name just a few: Hurricane Andrew, 1992; World Trade Center bomb ing, 1993; Oklahoma City bombing, 1995; Kobe, Japan, earthquake, 1995; Y2K prep arations 1999-2000; 9/11 terrorist attacks, 2001; Hurricane Katrina, 2005; Sichuan earthquake of 2008; Haiti earthquake, 2010; Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull eruption, 2010; Christchurch earthquake, 2010; Superstorm Sandy, 2012; California firestorms, 2015-2021; Hurricane Harvey (and associated floods), 2017; Hurricane Maria, 2017; Not-Petya, 2017; locust inva sions in Africa and Asia, 2020; COVID pandemic, 2020; daily mass shootings in the U.S.; school shootings; ransomware attacks; and much, much more. When we are repeatedly exposed to so many “bad things,” we become numb and this becomes the “new normal.” When things are unsettled, the economy is strug gling and money is tight. Our BCM pro grams, regardless of how many bad things are happening out there, are at risk. I first started to write about this issue in 2005, and it is even more applicable today. Value on Investment (VOI) What if you stopped and thought about things differently? In other words, is there another, perhaps more meaningful, way to show value of your program and your work? I have three questions for you to ponder: 1. What is the value-add of a BCM program? 2. Is the value-add only good in a crisis/ disaster? 3. Is there a way to show value to your organization every single day? Shouldn’t we as continuity profession als be asking if a better alternative exists to ROI? Is it possible to tie dollars invested to desired and realistic organizational out comes such as: n Increased resiliency. n Competitive advantage. n Effective staff training. n More thoughtful business processes. The answer is yes! Stop and consider the concept of “value on investment” for your work. What is VOI? This concept

10 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | WINTER 2022