What should companies be doing right now to emulate Wal-Mart and Home Depot?

They need to look at company culture. There is something in the DNA of resilient companies that is missing from those that falter and suffer. It goes beyond just redundancy. First of all, communication is key, and I’ve found that resilient companies communicate obsessively. The U.S. Navy is a good example. On aircraft carriers, there are lots of so-called listening networks that allow lots of people to listen to communication between pilots, the tower and the landing signal officers and others. It may sound like a lot of chatter, but everyone is listening intently so they can react immediately if something goes wrong.

Another factor is empowerment. At Toyota, for example, every worker can pull a cord and stop production if they see a quality problem. If they pull it, the line stops and a team of engineers descend to see what is going wrong instead of just letting the line keep working. This is an effort to prevent the making of bad cars. The same thing happens on a Navy carrier, where every sailor on deck has the right and responsibility to stop flight operations if they see a problem developing. This is amazing because you’re talking about what could be a 19-year-old with one year of training having the right to stop a multibillion-dollar ship with 6,000 highly trained sailors on deck. In disasters, it’s clear that you have to react immediately, and it’s possible that one sailor could see it coming.

The third characteristic of good culture is a passion for work. Navy sailors, for example, don’t think about their job as driving big ships, they think of their job as defending freedom.

How has globalization made companies and their IT systems more vulnerable when disaster hits?

Globalization of the supply chain is still marching on because labor costs are so low in places like China. But this trend stretches the supply chain across the globe and makes companies vulnerable. Lead times are longer, and a lot can happen in the meantime. It takes six to eight weeks to go over the ocean and during that time, demand can change. And, more importantly, risks such as theft and counterfeiting rise. Also, many regimes are unstable, and there are unpredictable events such as strikes and terrorism. All of this creates a more brittle supply chain. When something goes down and the transportation link breaks, the product is just not available.