Dropping the Ball: When Hard-Won BC Insights Get Thrown Away

For any organization serious about improving its resilience, the insights gained from business continuity exercises and real events are worth their weight in gold. Yet too often these hard-won lessons get thrown away due to the lack of a solid process for tracking and acting on them.

Related: Redrawing the Map: How BCM One Helps You Visualize Your Sites and Access Your Plans

The Problem that Never Gets Fixed

One of the more puzzling aspects of being a business continuity (BC) consultant is seeing the use companies make of the lessons they learn from exercises and outages. What’s puzzling is, all too often, they don’t make any use of them at all.

Insights into readiness gaps often come at great cost since exercises and outages are both expensive in different ways. They are also very valuable in terms of what they show about the needs of the company’s BC program. 

The pattern is repeated over and over: Organizations hold exercises or experience events, then analyze them and make note of the gaps that should be closed. Then the information goes into a report and is never seen again.

We often go to exercises with clients where the gaps that delay or prevent recovery are the same ones that were identified the previous time we did an exercise with them.

Examples of What Falls Through the Cracks

Here are some examples of issues that are commonly identified in exercises and events and then neglected:

• Communication templates

Many organizations discover that their “holding statements” or pre-written messages for staff, customers, or the media are outdated or incomplete. 

• Policies

Gaps often surface in policies that haven’t kept up with current realities—such as rules about taking laptops home or expectations for remote work. 

• Workarounds

Exercises frequently reveal missing contingency steps for critical processes, such as how to make payroll if core systems are down, or how to create the data extracts and routine reports that staff would need in order to carry out manual workarounds.

• Contact lists and notifications

It’s common to find contact lists that are outdated, incomplete, or lacking a defined update schedule, such as in emergency notification systems. Another issue with such systems is that permission to send notifications often excludes staff who need this capability.

• Assigning backup personnel

The necessary training may not have been performed, or teams may lack clarity on exactly who should step into a critical role if someone is unavailable. 

None of these gaps is theoretical. These are real-world vulnerabilities whose persistence has the potential to slow or prevent timely recovery.

Why Action Items Get Lost

It is easy to point out how wasteful and short-sighted it is not to close identified gaps. But actually tracking and managing gaps is very challenging. 

It requires diligence, organization, and a willingness to nudge others to act and even to refer things up the ladder, if necessary.

The temptation to focus on other important BC activities and let these gaps fall through the cracks is strong.

But for those who are seriously committed to enhancing their organization’s resilience, addressing these gaps is one of the most valuable things you can do.

The Solution: BC Teams Must Own the Process

The job of tracking and managing lessons learned from exercises and events belongs to one group: the BC team. The BC team or office is the unit with the responsibility of keeping track of identified gaps and managing what is done about them.

This isn’t the same thing as saying the BC team is responsible for closing the gaps. That’s up to the relevant department. Nor does it mean that every identified gap must be closed. Decisions should be guided by the same considerations that govern all BC matters: Is the benefit worth the cost, and what is leadership’s appetite for risk? The final call rests with management.

Still, it’s the BC team’s job to stay on top of these gaps, ensuring they are addressed consciously rather than forgotten.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of what managing identified gaps involves: 

• • Tracking action items in a centralized list that includes description, owner, priority, and status.

• • Reviewing progress regularly to ensure items are moving forward.

• • Escalating as needed when action items stall.

• • Reporting status to senior leadership so decision-makers can see where risks remain and direct resources accordingly.

• • Categorizing items by criticality, distinguishing what must be addressed from what’s merely nice to have.

In short, the BC team isn’t expected to close every gap all by itself. But it is responsible for keeping track of vulnerabilities, monitoring the progress toward closing them, and ensuring decisions about each item are made consciously. 

Tools for Tracking and Managing Action Items

Managing post-exercise and post-event action items places a significant tracking burden on BC staff. A tool can make the job more manageable, and a wide variety of tools can be used to accomplish it.

Items can be tracked using a spreadsheet, a shared document, or a simple SharePoint form. The information to be noted should include the action description, owner, priority, status, and any relevant deadlines. 

Specialized software offers additional advantages. BCM One, part of MHA’s BCMMetrics tool suite, is best known for its facility mapping and document storage capabilities; however, it also provides a robust action-item tracking feature. 

In BCM One, action items can be linked directly to the exercises or events that generated them, prioritized, and monitored over time. The tool gives BC teams and steering committees program-level visibility, so it’s easy to see which items remain open, which are resolved, and where attention is needed.

Key features of BCM One’s action-item tracking include:

• • Linking items to specific exercises or events for context

• • Assigning owners, setting priorities, and tracking status over time.

• • Logging incidents and attaching action plans for coordinated response.

• • Maintaining a centralized repository that integrates with facility mapping and recovery plans.

• • Providing management visibility for informed decision-making and risk oversight.

Even with a powerful tool like BCM One, success ultimately depends on ownership. Software helps organize and track items, but only the BC team can ensure follow-up, accountability, and completion.

From Insight to Action

Organizations can potentially gain enormous value from the insights revealed by exercises and real events, but that value is squandered if action items are ignored. It is the responsibility of the BC team to track these gaps, actively monitor progress, and ensure they are managed and addressed.

Consistent tracking and visibility are essential for turning findings into improvements. Tools like BCM One can make the process more efficient, but ownership, follow-up, and accountability always rest with the BC team.

To ensure lessons learned truly strengthen your organization, expert guidance and effective tracking processes are critical. Contact MHA Consulting or BCMMetrics to learn how our expertise and platform can help your team do better at turning insights into resilience.

Further Reading

• Redrawing the Map: How BCM One Helps You Visualize Your Sites and Access Your Plans
• The Hidden Reasons Recovery Exercises Fail
• Dancing in the Dark: The Hidden Costs of Shadow IT
• Mind the Gap: A Compliance Gap Analysis Shows Where Your BC Program Needs Work
• Beyond the Binder: Turn Plans into Preparedness Through Training and Awareness