Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts. Today on the podcast, we’re talking with James MacDonnell - Director, Crisis Management and Business Continuity at BDO USA. James is a risk management, business continuity, and crisis management professional with more than 18 years of experience helping Fortune 100 clients and federal agencies prepare for and respond to crises and emerging risks. But what he’s especially good at is developing ways to gamify business continuity activities. You’re going to want to hear how it works and the benefits it has brought to many programs. And you’ll even get to hear my experience of gamifying my BIA collection.

Industry Groups are an essential part of any profession. They allow practitioners and thought leaders to share knowledge and generate ideas with their colleagues in a collaborative setting. However, a new generation is making up an increasingly large percentage of the workforce — one that brings with it new priorities and ideas that don’t necessarily fit the mold of current formats. This week on the podcast, we’re going to explore the impact that the next generation of professionals are having on the business continuity industry.

In this episode of the podcast, we’re talking with Michael Crooymans, the Global Resilience Officer for Signify (previously known as Philips Lighting). His current focus is establishing and implementing the Global Resilience program which focuses on improving the maturity of Business Continuity and crisis/major incident management in the organization. However, he’s also well known for his considerable efforts in building the business continuity professional practices through his volunteering. We will get to hear how he's applied that work into his professional life.

In this 2 part series on the podcast, we are going to hear from both the Crisis Manager directly liaising with the government, and also the person who experienced it directly. Both of these individuals were exposed to the same crisis, a kidnapping event, but from two very different perspectives. One having to deal with it from outside, the other one from inside.

So this week on the podcast we’re holding the first of hopefully several round table discussions with some well known voices within business continuity. Today's  conversation explores how COVID has changed many BC professional’s worldviews as inspired many to question how the industry will need to address various parts of the profession as we move forward.

This week on the podcast, we’re going to speak with a practitioner who faced the challenge of needing a BIA tool. But when she saw that a BC software wasn’t in the cards, she created her own! We’re speaking with Michelle Marx, who is the Resilience and Business Continuity Manager at Transport for London.  Michelle’s recently unveiled her latest version of her homegrown BIA tool, which is powered by Microsoft’s Power Apps - an off-the-shelf tool many companies use to create homegrown applications for their teams. We get to understand her development process and see if this is something others may wish to explore further for their own programs.

We're returning to one more old episode because of the HUGE interest it generated. On this week's show, Shane interviews John Hill, a seasoned consultant with over 20 years of experience in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. John has found a great way to address the consistent appearance of process issues when preparing organizations for regulatory examinations. John integrated the concept of continuous improvement concepts into his BC programs and has lots of stories about how this work has enabled him to create value with leadership. John demonstrates that by using the information he gathered during a BIA or plan development, he was able to improve the efficiency of his organization’s business processes with big results.

We're revisiting the episode that started it all! It remains our number 1 downloaded episode because it contains SO many tips on creating BCM engagement, its worth a re-listen. We talk with Scott Baldwin, a BCM program leader who has started several programs in Silicon Valley (Netflix, Ebay, Charles Schwab, Symantec) in his career. Scott has found some unique way to keep things fresh. We’re learn more about his approach to not only starting a program, but how he keeps the organization engaged through simple things like a decentralized BCM certification program.

People tend to find comfort in certain books, and reading habits and genre preferences can change during periods of stress. So what books would be valuable to discover, or rediscover as a Business Continuity professional during this year? We talk with Eric Anez, the Global Head of Business Resilience at Finastra, a financial technology company based in London. Quarterly, Erick has been releasing his recommendations for books that he’s read that has influenced his journey as a professional and a BC leader. So I asked him to join our show and share his recommendations for the top 10 books he’d recommend to our BC practitioners and listeners hoping to improve their professional journey.

For young professionals in the business continuity field, developing a personal brand might sound challenging. This week, we talk with Luke Bird, FBCI CRISC. Since his career began, he developed his personal brand within Business Continuity by writing and networking with many other international professionals. His writing led to becoming a self published author of "BlueyedBC – Business Continuity for Junior Professionals" and most recently, becoming elected as a Director to the Business Continuity Institute’s Global Board. And we’re going to talk with him about how he developed a personal brand within our field.

Business Continuity can sometimes be a lonely road. Though the work seemingly touches all parts of the business, you’re oftentimes focused on a parallel track of activity that isn’t normally top of mind with your business partners. So what can you do to change this?  This week on the podcast, we’re going to be talking with Jamie Goodloe from Onsolve, about the idea of embedding your program into other parts of the business to cultivate partnerships and demonstrate value long before an incident.

This week on the show we’re interviewing Ricky Wells, the General Manager at ServiceMaster Advanced Restorations. Ricky has been helping companies restore their facilities after major fires, spills and disruptions.  And He’s a big advocate for the act of pre-planning for these events.  We’re also going to hear what his company is doing in the age of COVID- when offices are trying to wrap their heads around what “clean” versus “COVID clean” really means.

This week, we talk with IT thought-leader Daniel Breston, who believes that AI could also prove to be a "valuable ally" in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of activities related to Business Continuity. Current technological maturity, with the help of enormously powerful hardware systems that are capable of performing computational calculations, have made the previously unthinkable, reachable. And our industry is now positioned to apply this capability directly to our work- from planning, to early detection and response. Daniel talks about it all!

This week, Shane talks with James Green, Director of Risk Advisory Services for SAI Global. James recently wrote a featured article in the Disaster Recovery Journal called: "Is Our Profession at a Crossroads?" where he asked and tried to answer the question that many in our profession have been asking- Why was the role of business continuity seen so non-vital, that it was included in layoffs?

This week, we explore a simple option for those who aren't quite ready for business continuity software. We talk with Chris Rivera, a Evernote Certified Consultant and former BC practioner, who believes there are some unique characteristics to the commonly available productivity app that can be harnessed by the BC program leaders who are trying to find a way to make their manual processes of planning a bit more efficient. On the episode, we talk about the common features many look for in BC software, Evernote's capabilities and some ways you can immediately use its functionality to address a program's needs.

This week, we interview a user of the Adaptive Business Continuity principles. I interview José M. Garay, a Business Continuity professional with more than 20 years of experience in the financial sector in Peru. Jose has been leading BC programs at Peruvian companies within the pension funds, insurance and banking industries.   He approached the principles of ABC just like many others, with a healthy dose of skepticism, and as you’ll hear from his story, has taken a unique approach to melding the traditional programs with the ABC model.

This week, Shane interviews Micheal Herrera, founder and CEO of MHA Consulting and BCMMetrics, who recently wrote an article titled- "Sidelined: The Strange Fate of BCM During the COVID Pandemic.” His article observes what many witnessed- that many BCM professionals were either not the primary leader in a Pandemic response for their organization, or one of the first let go during furloughs caused by cost cutting. We discuss Michael's observations about why this may have happened and if this can be remedied

This week, Shane interviews James Mitchell- the Director of Organizational Resilience at the 724-bed Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX. His responsibilities encompass Emergency Management, Business Continuity and Enterprise Risk.  The last few months he has been heavily involved with a historic pandemic response at Texas Children’s which involved a 140+ day activation of their incident command system. And he graciously sat down with me so we could talk about how he approaches his program, the unique challenges healthcare presents to business continuity, and how he ensures his executive team is always aware and engaged.

Shane continues a series of interviews with business & operational leaders who had no previous business continuity experience and were thrust into launching a recovery strategy in not-so-ideal circumstances. Sheeba Philip is the CEO for Akola (Akola.co)  a globally-inspired jewelry brand on a mission to empower women in need in Eastern Africa. With both manufacturing operations in Uganda, Africa, and retail and operational activities in Texas, Sheeba has to shift immediately into business continuity mode without any formal training or plan. Listen as she describes all the issues she had to deal with, from dealing with business finances, to employee safety and shifting priorities all during a global pandemic.

Shane starts a series of interviews with business & operational leaders who had no previous business continuity experience and were thrust into launching a work from home strategy in not-so-ideal circumstances. Anitha Abraham is a leader of a Medical Center business unit with tasks that were entirely office based. Listen as she describes the actions she had to take (without any BC planning) to get her team working from home and continuing her vital tasks. This story highlights the importance of having a resource with operational understanding assigned to help with crafting a BC strategy and that many people do not have automatically have the technology or a work process that will work from home!