Plane Crash Lessons

The recent plane crash where a whole board of a company died should cause concern for owners and directors of private companies.

On top of this, recent research coming out from Stanford Universtity highlights that more than half of private business surveyed cannot name a successor to their CEO.

In my experince in private companies, the percentage would be more like ninety percent do not a working succession plan for a staff member to take over if the CEO or MD died suddenly.

In fact how many family board members or senior executives travel overseas on the same plane ? I bet the board members who died earlier this week did not believe it would happen to them.

Have a look in your own business and role play a situation where a couple of your senior leaders
are no longer able to come to work.

What is your back up plan ?

There are plenty of examples in Australia where where this has happened and guess who was first to knock on the door. ?

The bank of course ! After all they hold most of the outstanding loans.

I have recently come across two large medium size companies and they both do not have any Business Continuity Plan ( BCP ) in place. And, in both examples, the CEO was not interested. One of these is a small listed entity with a turnover of $70 million.

Go ahead and do the role play or simulation and see what gaps you identify.