Escalation and Control

Here’s another new idea for business continuity that’s come from a business continuity course that I’m giving. Instead of just having control and escalation procedures to enable communication up and down the chain of command, why not have a special group sitting alongside the strategic, tactical, and operational teams that has the sole job of handling information up and down the command chain?

This group doesn’t replace the chain of command, it supplements it, making sure that information is getting to the right people in a timely manner. I’ve never thought of this before, but it might be something that’s in common practice elsewhere. If it is, does it work, or does it actually start to replace the chain of command and put all communication in the hands of a small group of people? The danger then, of course, is that they become a bottleneck and slow down the flow of vital information. There is also the danger that they could start to censor information, taking on themselves the role of deciding who should get which information.