Five Questions Every Leadership Team Should Answer Before A Disruption
By Dan Roberts on 9/7/2026
September is National Preparedness Month, which makes it a good time to ask a simple question: If an unexpected disruption were to affect your business tomorrow, would your leadership team know what to do?
Most leaders would probably say yes. The problem is many businesses do not discover gaps in their communication, decision making, and operational planning until they are responding to a disruption in real time. You do not need an all-day planning session to begin identifying those gaps. Fifteen minutes with the right people and five direct questions can tell you a lot about how prepared your business really is.
1. If our business stopped operating tomorrow, what would need to be restored first?
You probably already know which tools and systems your business relies on every day, but recovery planning requires a more specific answer. If operations were to stop tomorrow, your leadership team would need to know which functions should be restored first to protect customers, revenue, and daily operations.
That could mean customer support, payment processing, scheduling, order fulfillment, or access to files employees need to keep working. The answer will vary from one business to another, but the goal is the same: identify what cannot sit idle for long. Defining those priorities ahead of time allows your team to focus on what matters most instead of trying to restore everything at once.
2. Who is responsible for making decisions during a disruption?
Pressure can quickly expose unclear ownership. When employees don't know who has the authority to make decisions, they may wait for approval, duplicate work, or pull leaders into separate conversations, all of which can slow the response.
Your team should know who starts the response, who updates employees, who communicates with customers, and who works with vendors, service providers, and your technology partner. These roles do not need to create a complicated chain of command. They simply need to remove confusion and help people act with confidence when normal routines break down.
3. How would we communicate if our normal tools were not available?
Email, phones, and collaboration platforms feel dependable until they stop working. When they do, even simple communication can become harder than expected. If employees could not access email, would they know where to find instructions? If your phone system failed, how would customers reach your team? If your usual collaboration platform became unavailable, where would leadership share updates and assign work?
A backup communication plan does not need to be complicated. It needs to give employees and customers a dependable place to turn when normal communication channels are unavailable. Having this figured out ahead of time helps reduce confusion when people need clear direction most.
4. What is our biggest operational dependency?
Some risks are easy to overlook because they support the business every day without drawing much attention. Your biggest dependency could be a software platform, an internet connection, a third-party provider, or even an employee who understands a process no one else fully knows.
These dependencies may not seem risky during normal operations, but a single failure can affect multiple areas of the business at once. Understanding where your business depends heavily on one system, provider, or employee gives you an opportunity to consider documentation, testing, backup options, or outside support before the dependency becomes a problem.
5. If a disruption happened tomorrow, what would we wish we had prepared today?
This question can help leadership move beyond assumptions by thinking about what the business would need during an actual disruption. Your team may wish it had documented an important process, tested backups, updated contact information, identified responsibilities, or agreed on which systems should be restored first.
None of those tasks feel especially urgent during a normal week, which is exactly why they are easy to postpone. Preparation gives your team room to respond instead of reacting. A strong recovery plan answers important questions before anyone needs to ask them under pressure.
Where Your Technology Partner Comes In
After working through these five questions, you should have a better sense of which answers are clear and which still rely on assumptions. Your technology partner can help identify operational risks, test recovery processes, verify backups, document important systems, and connect technology planning to your business priorities.
Preparedness should not feel like a technical exercise. It should give leadership a clearer understanding of how people, processes, and technology work together when normal operations are interrupted.
Put This Meeting On Your Calendar
Fifteen minutes with your leadership team can reveal a lot about how prepared your business is today. If your team can answer all five questions confidently, you have a strong understanding of how the organization would respond. If some answers are unclear, you have identified areas worth addressing before they affect operations.
At RTS, we help businesses throughout the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor prepare for unexpected disruptions through practical planning, responsive support, and clear communication. Our goal is to help business leaders understand where they stand today and reduce uncertainty before a problem puts their plans to the test.
If your leadership's 15-minute conversation uncovers a few questions your team cannot answer confidently, let's have a conversation.
Call 319 364 3004 or schedule a discovery call here.
