Michael Leiter serves as an expert on counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and national security for NBC News and worked as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) from 2008 to July 2011.
On October 15, Mr. Leiter will deliver the keynote address at the annual SunGard Availability Services Business Continuity International User Group Forum at the Chicago Marriott Downtown from Oct. 14 – 16. In his address, “Leading in a Crisis: Before, During, and After,” Mr. Leiter will share lessons on instilling leadership while managing a crisis and describe his experiences with helping manage scenarios that impacted the nation’s security.
The SunGard International User Group Forum is a symposium that offers peer-to-peer sessions on business continuity (BC), real-life case studies of disaster events and success stories of business continuity plans resolving operational disruptions. Attendees will also learn about implementing BC software in an organization and view the next generation of BC Software enhancements that will shape the future of business continuity management. Follow the conversation on Twitter at #SunGardUGF
In advance of the User Group Forum, SunGard asked Mr. Leiter for his opinions on leadership, crisis management, overlooked factors, and how enterprises can learn from national security threats.
What is the most important factor in leading an organization through a crisis?
First and foremost, it’s the idea that planning is not just for a predicted future. Planning is critical for responding in a time of crisis. It allows you to understand your organization, its surroundings, and what you are faced with. And when an unpredictable or predictable event occurs that throws a wrench in works, it is that planning which allows you to respond in a crisis and change the organization’s priorities because you understand it so well.
When is leadership most important when a crisis or business disruption arises?
I’m a very strong believer in leadership from the very top at all times, but especially before and during a crisis. It affects every part of the organization. Part of the responsibility of the highest level of leadership is to create champions in every part of the organization for your business continuity and crisis plan.
Your professional background includes roles in the highest levels of government, including at the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Even at highly organized organizations with respected leaders, do you find that crisis planning still has a role?
When you have a crisis, the best laid plans go out window, except for those pieces that help you understand how your organization can shift and change to respond to new situations. Also, in my experience, in terms of planning during a crisis, it’s critical for a leader to understand all components of an organization and what its capabilities are. Because unfortunately, no matter the organization, many people in the organization may very well lose their cool. The more you have thought about what the organization can do and cannot do, the better position you will be in to react to that time of crisis, to adjust to changed circumstances, and then reshape the organization beyond the period of crisis to be more effective when you have new requirements upon you.
How do you apply lessons you learned from managing major national security threats as director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to business continuity planning for enterprises?
Let’s take the raid on Osama bin Laden [in May 2011] as an example. This was an undertaking that required an enormous amount of planning in the run up to the raid. At various intelligence agencies, people had been working on this mission for over a decade. They had been planning and thinking and identifying every possible eventuality. In this particular case, we knew when the crisis might arise, which was when the operation would be enacted. So in last two weeks before it became active, the plans were shown to an entirely new group of people who had not been involved at all. Everything was presented to them, and we said, “Come up with all the eventualities you can and tell us all things we might be getting wrong.”
Another example is the attacks in Mumbai, India [in 2008]. In evaluating security threats, it was typical at the time to always talk to local authorities like the police. In the Mumbai attacks, it turned out the attackers used fire as a weapon while inside a large building. This was an eventuality no one had thought about.
I think any organization can learn from these examples. It’s great to have intelligent, well-informed people involved in business continuity planning, but also it’s also critical before the finalizing that plan to step back. You want to give that same information and the scenarios to a group of people outside the organization who understand the problem, but who aren’t emotionally involved to the outcomes or the plan. The goal is to try to come up with alternatives to find where the planning may have gone off the mark and to identify the problems.
What are your recommendations for initial steps for building a BC/DR plan for an organization of any size?
You have to start small. You can’t plan for all eventualities and you shouldn’t start with everything falling apart. Start with a smaller crisis, such as what happens if you lose your company email. That can be a crisis, for sure, but it’s much different that losing all your electronic storage. In national security planning, we don’t start with a nuclear attack on Washington. We ask what would happen if there were a suicide bomber in Washington, D.C. and how we would react and handle that. It’s much better to start from a smaller crisis and build out.
As a former national security leader, you had stakeholders across a wide range, such as the White House, agencies like the CIA and FBI, Congressional leaders, and, more broadly, the American public. What advice can you share with organizations about communicating effectively during a crisis to all its important stakeholders?
One thing that immediately comes to mind is that it’s very easy to assume that you understand what a customer wants when a crisis hits. In the case of my own crisis planning at the National Counterterrorism Center, I tried to understand what the President, the White House and members of Congress wanted for information. But I found it’s much better to sit down and ask them, “How do you want this information? When do you want it? What information do you want first? Who else do you think should be informed about this?” It may be difficult for some businesses to plan this way, but I think it’s important to engage customers and explain that during all these preparations to become well positioned for eventualities, you want to understand their requirements and what information they will want to know.
And internal communications is just as important. In my experience, the vast majority of people find this kind of strategic planning to be an annoyance. When you have a crisis plan developed only by the crisis planning team, it’s helpful but not nearly as useful as one developed by a broader cross section of users.
It’s incredibly important to engage stakeholders inside the organization and, sometimes, leaders have to do that with internal stakeholders by twisting their arm a little. You want to do that in a way that reduces the workload on them, but so that they understand it’s important and you need them. In the end, you will have a much better return on investment. If you leave any part of the organization out, it’s almost guaranteed that’s the part of organization that will open the plan for the first time at the moment of crisis.
During the crisis, it’s obviously about communication, communication, communication. If you can’t effectively communicate messages to employees and leaders across the organization, you could soon be faced with a workforce that thinks there is no plan. Your business crisis will quickly become an existential crisis.
