April 2024 - Bay of Plenty Business News

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10 BAY OF PLENTY BUSINESS NEWS April 2024 > BEYOND SURVIVAL: Elevating business continuity practices Business continuity is the ability of a business to continue operating critical business functions during and after a disaster event. The goal of having a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is to ensure that a business can maintain critical functions and recover quickly from various disasters. Or at worst, minimise downtime while services are restored. This concept is not new, and we have touched on it in previous articles. Some of the events that can cause a BCP to be enacted are natural disasters (floods, earthquakes), technological disasters (cyberattacks, hardware failure), man-made disasters (industrial accidents, civil infrastructure failures), and health emergencies (global pandemic, critical health and safety incidents). Many disasters are out of your control to mitigate. What you can do is to implement measures to protect your business from the fallout of these events. The initial safeguard you can implement is systems redundancy. If you have duplicate systems already in place when the primary system fails, they will take over and ensure your business operations continue. This is not recovery but continuity – and that is best. The next is backups. We all know that backups are important, but maintaining effective backup procedures is critical for recovering from a disaster. While this may not provide the continuity that redundancy does, it is often much cheaper and easier to maintain. Ideally, you should implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy: 3 copies of the data (original device, external hard drive, cloud storage), stored on 2 different types of storage (physical and cloud), in at least 1 offsite location (cloud) in addition to the onsite copies. These backups must also be tested regularly to ensure that they are usable. An excellent eventuality to TECH TALK BY EZRA RENTOUL prepare for is ensuring your staff can work from alternative locations where viable, such as working from home. This will ensure that your business can continue to operate at least to some extent, while the primary business location is made available again. Many businesses have already experienced this requirement during the lockdown periods. The last resort is insurance. It is the oldest, most commonly used, and best understood disaster recovery measure. If worst comes to worst, you will at least have financial support to recover and restore business functionality. Having redundant measures or backup strategies is all well and good, but if nobody knows how to apply these strategies, the effort has been wasted. Ensuring the right people are regularly trained in how to implement both the redundant and backup measures is critical. You must also ensure these measures are regularly tested to ensure they are operating as intended, else you may find them non-functional when you need them most. Having a written and agreed upon course of action will allow you and your staff to respond rapidly to these disasters as and when they occur. These written plans are known as Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP). The best way to ensure BCP plans remain precautionary measures, is by integrating some of the following: • Regular risk assessments allow you to apply risk mitigation strategies and prevent some disasters before they even occur; • Training and awareness programs help your staff to better protect your business by being more vigilant in their daily tasks; • Cross-training and succession planning are also crucial in allowing critical roles to be filled by multiple people as required, if the primary person is unavailable. Creating and implementing solid Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans ensures your business will not only survive, but possibly even thrive through any disaster. Ezra Rentoul is a Technical Engineer at Stratus Blue. He can be contacted at assist@stratusblue.co.nz The role of debt in funding community infrastructure There has been much discussion in recent months about the debt issues the local government sector is experiencing and the need to find new ways of funding vital community infrastructure, particularly in fast-growth centres like Tauranga. > By ANNE TOLLEY, TAURANGA COMMISSION CHAIR The need for investment is driven by community growth (Tauranga’s population has grown by around 30% in the last 10 years); having to catch-up on an underinvestment in infrastructure over the last decade and beyond; AND to provide for future growth in the face of significant increases in construction costs, with the price of many infrastructure project components increasing 20% or more in the last couple of years alone. As a result, councils like ours are having to take on more debt to build the new infrastructure needed to cater for their growing populations and renew existing, aging infrastructure, such as the water, wastewater and stormwater systems we must have, and the roads we get around on. Here it’s worth noting Standard and Poors’ February commentary that local government debt in New Zealand is “very high on a global scale and is rising more than our previous expectations”. One of the key reasons for that is that there is a greater reliance on local government here to deliver and fund infrastructure, compared to other countries. So what’s the solution? It’s a complex mix of prudent, but timely investment; managing costs; balancing rates, fees and charges; selling some assets to invest in new assets for the city; and leveraging debt as a significant component of local government infrastructure financing. That’s because debt allows councils to spread the financing cost of community assets over 20-plus years, which helps make them affordable. Just as importantly, it means repayments are funded in an intergenerational way by the people who are using and benefitting from those assets, not just those who were ratepayers when the asset was constructed. Most infrastructure assets have lifespans ranging between 30 and 100 years, so debt allows the financing period to be more aligned with the period the assets will be in use for. Debt needs to be serviced by appropriate revenue streams and the way that revenue is gathered also needs to be equitable. TCC goes to significant lengths to ensure that, as far as possible, ‘growth pays for growth’, through development contributions, and we also work hard to identify and access any available external contributions, such as Government grants. And of course, debt has to be ‘prudent’, both for the council and for those whose rates and other contributions (like parking charges, for example) are needed to fund debt repayments. TCC’s primary lender is the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA), which is jointly owned by all of the councils which borrow through it. The prudent debt limit applied by the LGFA for TCC’s total borrowing (in the 2024/25 financial year) is that debt cannot be more than 2.9 times our revenue (reducing to 2.8 times in future years). Our expected debt for 2024/25 will be well within that limit, but with a number of large and costly infrastructure projects on the horizon over the coming years, the council will be closely managing debt and revenue to ensure these streams are aligned and that debt funding remains affordable. One of our key actions we will be investigating a future structure for three waters service delivery which will maintain ratepayer ownership, but allow the debt related to water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to be held off the Council’s balance sheet. So in summary, debt is needed to allow essential infrastructure investment; increased debt can raise affordability concerns; but not increasing debt will also have negative economic and social impacts. As commissioner Stephen Selwood says, the bottom line is that the community pays either way. “It’s a choice between raising debt to fund needed investment, while working within prudent debt levels and considering the impact of borrowing on rates affordability, or deferring investment and suffering lost productivity and increased costs through inflation, congestion, rising house prices and a lack of the amenities a growing city needs.” Which says that while it’s a complicated equation, debt is not a dirty word – it’s a necessity of sensible local government.
April 2024 BAY OF PLENTY BUSINESS NEWS 11 > BREAKING THE ICE I ran across the frozen Arctic to discover the secret to career success In February, Bay of Plenty Business News columnist Freddie Bennett attempted the world’s toughest, coldest footrace: running 250km across the frozen Arctic in five days, carrying all his food and survival supplies on his back. He reveals the lessons he learned from the sub-zero wilderness that you can use to win at work, and at home. “The cold wants to kill me.” One solitary thought playing on repeat inside my head as I trudged through knee-deep snow. Somewhere beneath my feet, the ice cracked and splintered, with a sound like a gunshot. I was too tired to react. Running across the endless, sterile expanse of a frozen lake for five hours had dulled my senses. I had lost all sense of time, momentum, and – more worryingly – feeling in my fingers and toes. If this wasn’t concerning enough, I had another 35 kilometres to run that day. I would then get a few precious hours to eat by candlelight and dry my snow-sodden clothes near a tiny wood burning stove. Then I would rise before dawn and run another marathon over galeswept mountains and through haunting, snow-covered forests in temperatures that would fall to -45 degrees. Then the next day, I would run another marathon, followed by a 65-kilometre ultramarathon the day after. Upon this journey, I would experience frostbite, snow blindness and hallucinations. I would get so disoriented in blizzard conditions that I’d collapse and fall to the frozen ground. I’d encounter extreme hunger, tearful breakdowns, blisters … and a head-on collision with two reindeer in the dead of night. Why would I want to do this? Why the goal to become the only person in New Zealand to fly 12,000 miles to the Arctic circle and attempt the world’s toughest, coldest multi-day ultramarathon? The long answer is in my article from February’s issue of Bay of Business News. But the short answer is this: To prove to YOU that you can achieve more in your career and your life. I’m not a runner, an athlete, or one of these square-jawed ex-special forces types. I’m just an everyday guy who not so long ago was a corporate exec with a beer belly, a mental health problem, a crippling mortgage and a severe case of imposter syndrome. To help you on your journey through the perilous corporate landscape, here are my five lessons learned from the Arctic. You are your own greatest risk I was running through the deadliest place on the planet. The cold, the snow, the ice and the wildlife (polar bears) all had the capability of sending me back to New Zealand in a box. But the greatest risk to me, was me. My actions, my behaviours and decisions would ultimately make the difference between success and failure, and, in a couple of hairy moments, life or death. The same applies to you. Where are you tripping yourself up? Why are you making things hard for yourself? You know what you need to do. You can clearly see the action you need to take. The real issue isn’t the client, the economy, the supplier, the employee or the technology. The real issue is you. Get out of your own way. Stop waiting for permission to be great I had no right to be in this race. I was too old. Too busy. I lived too far away. I wasn’t fit enough. I wasn’t prepared enough. Surrounded by a bunch of seasoned athletes and explorers, I was almost crippled by imposter syndrome. Who was I to believe I could do something this special? But despite the doubt, the fear and the severe lack of confidence, I went ahead and did it anyway. You do not have to seek permission to do great things. You do not have to wait for the perfect moment. You do not have to wait for things to be ‘less busy’. You have to act. Even if you don’t feel like it. Even if you doubt yourself. The only permission you need is your own. Fundamentals beat tactics The best way to build momentum over the frozen mountain peaks and across the barren icy landscape was to dumb things down and keep it simple: Stay hydrated; Keep eating; Don’t stop moving; If I’d ignored the fundamentals, my race would be over. Yet, at work, 99% of people look for the advanced ‘secret’ tactics, habits and hacks before ever nailing the absolute fundamentals. The top 1% of performers are simply better at the fundamentals HIGH PERFORMANCE WITH FREDDIE BENNETT than anyone else. Whatever your goal, ask yourself: “What are the absolute non-negotiables here? What do I need to get right every single time, no matter the circumstance or situation”. The answer reveals where you should be focusing your efforts. Always move forward I spent many years of my corporate career skating on thin ice, but there were moments in the Arctic that were some of the darkest and most perilous of my life. You’ve experienced this feeling: That plummeting sensation in your stomach that makes you believe that nothing will ever be good again. The paralysing, confusing terror when you realise you’ve messed up and there’s no getting out of it. But these moments when you want to curl up in a ball and cry are when you must move forward. It doesn’t matter if it feels like you’re going through hell in your career: The best opportunities are always ahead of you. Have a story to tell The quality of your life directly correlates to the number of stories you have to tell. Simply having money in a bank account, an impressive-sounding title on LinkedIn or a Porsche on the driveway does not tell a compelling tale. This isn’t about accumulating. It’s about living (and I say this as a card-carrying capitalist). Think about everything you’re working for, everything you’re sacrificing: None of it really matters unless you have a story to tell. Put yourself on a mission that you truly believe in. Say ‘yes’ to the things you wouldn’t (or shouldn’t). Do the things you believe you cannot do. Your colleagues, clients and kids don’t want an elevator pitch, nor a verbal recital of your CV. They want to hear your story … and see you live it. As the finisher’s medal was placed around my neck, I realised this chapter of my story had ended. I have the memories, the scars and the frostbite. I ran this race to prove that with the right knowledge, mindset and habits, everyday people can achieve remarkable things. So, if I can go from a frozen rock bottom to the icy peaks … imagine what you can achieve. Freddie Bennett is a Guinness World Record holder, bestselling author and leads New Zealand’s leading mastermind group for professionals: Professional Superheroes. He gets businesses unstuck, unshackled and unleashed. Freddie can be contacted at hello@freddiembennett.com
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