Lessons Learned: Short Stories of Continuity and Resilience:

by Michele L. Turner

Overview

Continuity and Resilience- two words that could track to the same destination albeit, varied in arrival time. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition for Continuity is: uninterrupted connection, succession, or union. Using this same resource, the definition for Resilience is: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. While an uninterrupted life, free of misfortune may sound wonderful, it is in the challenge, in the change, that we learn the greatest lessons. This book has been written with 51 years of personal life experiences, and an overlay of close to 30 years of professional subject matter expertise in managing the continuance of business operations across the globe, come rain...or shine. Both aspects have resulted in significant lessons learned... stories of continuity and resilience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798708633569
Publisher:	M2
Publication date:	02/17/2021
Pages:	62
Sales rank:	849,680
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.13(d)

About the Author

Michele L. Turner, MBCP, FBCI, CISA, CRISC, GRCP, has roughly 30 years experience in the areas of Governance, Risk, and Compliance, with a Masters of Science degree in Business Continuity from Norwich University. She is the Head of Global Business Resiliency for Amazon. In this role, she has developed the framework and methodology for Business Continuity, providing Leadership for this team, Crisis Management and Resiliency Management (inclusive of Workplace Resiliency) within Amazons Corporate environment. Prior to this, she led Governance, Risk, Compliance and Business Continuity roles within Microsoft, initiating the Operational Risk Management vertical for this organization. Turner is an international speaker on the topic of Business Continuity, Risk Management, and related areas. She is a requested guest lecturer at the University of Washington, on such topics as Cyber Security and Operational Risk, and a Course Instructor and Board Director for Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII). She provides input as a Director of Giving within that orgs Foundation focus, and is also a member of the Conference Boards' Business Continuity and Crisis Management Council.

Michele is a resident of Snohomish, Washington, and a very proud grandmother of two amazing grandsons.

Editorial Reviews

2022-02-18
Debut author and business continuity expert Turner recounts a successful career in which she overcame considerable challenges, and shares wisdom she found along the way.

That author writes that she inherited her “core values” from her parents, both of whom cleaned houses and paid for her first few years of college. She insisted on making her own contributions to the cost of her education, and despite full-time work (which led her to a position at a technology consultancy) and responsibilities of family life, she graduated from Roosevelt University in 2000 and earned a master’s degree in business continuity from Norwich University 12 years later. Over the course of an accomplished career—she’s currently the head of global business resiliency for Amazon—she learned not only to manage risks and “business interruptions,” but also to reflect on other priorities of a professional and personal nature. She created her own methodology for assessment, which she calls PARSE, an acronym which stands for “Prepare, Assess, Remediate, Sustain, and Examine”; she goes on to explain this blueprint with accessible clarity. The author candidly discusses her private life and draws concrete examples from it to illustrate her principal points. For example, after missing a business meeting due to a grave medical emergency—she suffered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism—she says that she reflected on the significance she assigned to work: “Slowing down is healthy. Think about it, there are brakes on a car, not to ensure that you never move, but to ensure that when you do, you can do so in a controlled way.” This is unimpeachably sensible counsel, but it also seems rather obvious. Indeed, the whole of the author’s remembrance is unfailingly sound, but there’s little here that readers will find to be novel. Nonetheless, one can’t help but be impressed by Turner’s success and the humility with which she discusses it. Her memoir is less a book than a long essay—it isn’t quite 60 pages long—and it will likely appeal most to those who know her personally.

A sensible, if conventional, assemblage of homespun advice.

Kirkus Reviews