In 2013, Target Corporation suffered an extensive, unanticipated, long-term disruption to one of its headquarters buildings in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The cause? A leak in the water line for an ice machine.
In a 2014 article in the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Bryghtpath CEO Bryan Strawser, who was at Target before founding Bryghtpath, and Kim Hirsch, then of Target, write about the lessons learned from this large-scale business disruption.
Here’s the full abstract from the publication:
Business continuity practitioners routinely determine which teams in their companies are critical and undertake extensive and rigorous planning processes. But what happens when a business is faced with an unanticipated long-term disruption that primarily affects non-critical teams? How can a company use the essential principles of business continuity and crisis management in order to respond? This paper explores a 2013 business disruption experienced by Target Corporation at one of its headquarters locations caused by a leak in the water line for an ice machine. Challenges encountered and reviewed include supporting non-critical teams, leadership of a multi-week business disruption and how remote work technologies have changed traditional continuity alternative workspace solution planning. Lessons learned from this activation are presented with implications for business continuity and emergency management planning that are applicable to any industry.
The lesson still holds. A business impact analysis tells you which teams are critical on a normal day. It doesn’t tell you which teams your executives will treat as critical once a multi-week disruption lands on them. We tell the short version of the story, and what it means for your BIA, in How to Conduct a Business Impact Analysis. The paper’s point about remote work and alternate workspace planning is one most organizations relearned in 2020; we covered it on Ep. 225: How Has Remote and Distributed Work Impacted Business Continuity?
The article is available from the publisher, Henry Stewart Publications (HSTalks), and is indexed on PubMed.
Full citation: Hirsch KD, Strawser BE. When a drip becomes a flood: Lessons learned from Target Corporation’s first large-scale business disruption. J Bus Contin Emer Plan. 2014-2015 Winter;8(2):114-21. doi:10.69554/OWAD5780
Keep Going
A few ways to go deeper if this was useful.
- Read more. Resilience, crisis management, and continuity writing at Bryghtpath Insights, or the BIA section of our Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity.
- Test the plan before the leak. Exercise in a Box® includes a Flood scenario your team can run themselves.
- Get a maturity score. Our Resiliency Diagnosis® is a standards-based review that produces a maturity score and a prioritized roadmap.
- Talk to us. Set up a call to think through your business continuity program with us.
