Be prepared and have a plan. The last few weeks have had some excellent and unfortunate examples of the importance of being prepared and having a plan. The recent weather tragedies around the country, especially in the south central United States, are perfect examples of how critical it can be if you’re not prepared for the possibility of severe weather events. Many people’s lives were saved because of severe weather warnings, and their own individual preparedness with storm shelters or evacuation plans.

Even the less severe weather events that have been prevalent throughout the central and upper Midwest with the late, wet spring and farmers’ inability to get field work done as early as normal, required contingency plans for the rest of the season.

Closer to home, we had a customer recently lose over two years of financial information because of a problem with his main computer. He had religiously backed up his data, only to discover his backups were not going to the correct location, and when his computer had a problem, he found that his last good backup was two years old.

These conditions give us a good wake-up call on the importance of being prepared and having a plan for the unexpected. Whether dealing with weather, economic conditions, or technology problems, we all need to think about what our plan is to recover from unexpected and uncontrollable situations.