Editor's Introduction Louisiana Corporate was the most affectedmember of the corporate credit union network by Hurricane Katrina.Its story is one of resourcefulness, drive and a desire to serveits member credit unions in the worst of times. The corporate wasforced to operate out of its back-up facility in Lenexa, Kansas foralmost three months. Its employees were displaced, having to starttheir lives over so to speak in another state. Here, LouisianaCorporate CEO Dave Savoie reflects on the corporate's extraordinaryjourney. When the approach of Hurricane Katrina caused LouisianaCorporate to implement its business contingency plan on Saturday,August 27, 2005, none of us would have predicted we would beoperating offsite until Nov. 14, 2005. We were expecting our usualand well-rehearsed “hurricane drill”, a few days of operatingremotely until the storm had passed. This was a different kind ofcontingency operation, one that totaled 79 days of offsiteoperation, over 20% of the work year or one day of every five of2005 spent operating Louisiana Corporate remotely. Unfortunately,there is nothing uncommon about that story, after suffering theimpact of both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it was the commonexperience of nearly every credit union in southern Louisiana.Nevertheless, any contingency operation of such a significantduration deserves an “after action” report in an attempt to derivesome lessons learned. People Aren't Human “Resources” In reviewingour experience, a few key points stand out. First and foremost,disaster recovery and business continuity are about people. Peoplemake disaster recovery happen and people make business continuitycontinue successfully. The best written, most highly testeddisaster recovery plan is just ink on paper that will not jump outof its three-ring binder and do one thing for you when the chipsare down. Make no mistake, the written plan is vital, but peoplemust animate its operation and however well planned and rehearsedit is, deviations will be necessary. One thing that differentiatespeople from written plans and laptop computers is a fundamentaldesire, even a need, to understand the importance of what they aredoing. As a manager in a disaster recovery situation, hopefully youhave already worked out the technical and logistical details of howyou will conduct operations. Your most important jobs, in myexperience, will be the following: * taking care of your people(well before 79 days of offsite operation, you will no longer referto anyone as a human resource; they will be “people”); a large partof this will be your ability to articulate the “why” of disasterrecovery, the importance of the jobs your people are doing eachday; * deciding when to go into contingency operations and when tocome out of them, i.e. “pulling the trigger” and “coming home”; and* modifying your plan to rapidly changing conditions, i.e.“thinking on your feet”. Like just about every other credit unionin southern Louisiana, our people were performing their jobs at ouroffsite location when they were unsure about the location of theirloved ones and the status of their homes, and after they learned ofthe destruction of their homes. They were performing their jobswhen TV coverage was showing their neighbors wading through wateror waiting to be rescued from rooftops. They were still performingtheir jobs while negotiating with FEMA inspectors and insuranceagents and contractors to try to start putting their own lives backtogether. They kept doing their jobs while getting their childrenenrolled in out-of-town schools and taking care of the living needsof dislocated relatives. During this period, Louisiana Corporatenever ceased operations and continued to provide every possibleservice, product and function. That is a testament to the abilityof our people to focus on the jobs while dealing with pressing andcritical personal concerns. My advice to anyone who findsthemselves in charge of such a situation is to do everything inyour power to take care of your people, and define that termbroadly. It might include spouses, children, siblings, parents,even pets. Cast a wide net. People cannot focus when they areunsure about the security of their day-to-day arrangements. To theextent possible, get your people settled down and taken care of.Let them know what the organization's goal is. If your goal is toprovide all your services remotely and return to your home officeas soon as its safe to do so, don't assume everyone knows that isyour goal – communicate your goal clearly. Get everyone aiming atthe same target. Once that is done, clearly communicate to yourpeople the importance of their jobs during contingency operations.It's sometimes easy in our business to feel that we are not doingimportant work in a large sense. It's even easier to feel that waywhen you are watching your neighbors being airlifted from theirrooftops. This is the time when every credit union employee shouldunderstand that the operation of the credit union system, as partof the American financial system, is as vital to civil order andpeople's welfare as standing in the disaster area handing out foodand water. When credit union employees do their individual jobs,individual credit union members can access cash in their accountsand send cash to loved ones. In a disaster area, cash can equalsurvival. Our staff understood that the work they were doing wasjust as important as handing out ice and blankets, they wereenabling people to get to their funds and take care of their needs.That's why we operated remotely for 79 days under the hospitalityof U.S. Central and the Corporate Credit Union network, but in alarger sense, that's why all of us in the credit union business goto work everyday. It's important to stop and think about that oncein a while. If we may offer a few other observations, one would bethat your offsite operations may approach the quality of yournormal on-site operations, but they certainly will be no betterthan the quality at which you operate everyday. The discipline ofthings like daily balancing with a zero tolerance for outages andkeeping members' records current during normal times will serve youwell when operating in a contingency situation. The skills yourstaff develop during normal operations by keeping the performancebar set high, will serve you well when times are rougher. It's likethe guy who asked his doctor if he would be able to play pianoafter his hand surgery, and when the doctor said yes, remarked thathe was elated because he could not play piano before. If you can“play piano” before your contingency operations, you will stand amuch better chance of doing it during offsite operations. BeingSmall Has Its Advantages One other observation has to do with thetrade off between economies of scale and flexibility of operations.The victory of the vastly outgunned American Navy in theRevolutionary war against numerically superior British forces isascribed by many historians to the maneuverability of theAmerican's quicker and smaller ships. Economies of scale exist, butlike everything else in nature, they come at a cost, one of whichcan be rapidity of response and flexibility. The conventionalpost-Katrina credit union thinking that large numbers of smallcredit unions in Louisiana would be a liability may turn out to bewrong. The ability of small institutions to innovate, adapt andchange direction rapidly may be just what the doctor ordered in thepost-Katrina Louisiana credit union environment. Last, but notleast, what stands out in the mind of all of us at LouisianaCorporate is what we consider to be the true “credit uniondifference”. That is the unreserved willingness of everyone atevery level in the credit union system to work together throughtimes of crisis. We know we were beneficiaries of that willingnessto help and we hope that we were also meaningful contributors toit. We were humbled and gratified by the many acts and offers ofassistance we received and we hope that we were successful inproviding assistance to others in the network. If credit unions allhave less in common now than in the past, Louisiana Corporate cancertainly testify that the credit union philosophy of helping ourmembers and each other is alive and well. The credit union spiritis one thing Katrina could not claim and something that the criticsof our system should never underestimate.