Business Continuity Isn’t About Disasters – It’s About Tuesdays
Ever had one of your most important business tools look like this pile of broken furniture?
Last week, my laptop display stopped working. No warning, no gradual dimming – just a black screen where my workday should have been. I had client work to complete, emails to send, and meetings scheduled throughout the day.
Twenty years ago, this would have been a significant disruption. Today? I drove to the Apple Store, dropped off the laptop, came home, logged into my backup device, and continued my day. Total downtime: about 45 minutes, most of it spent in traffic.
This wasn’t because I’m particularly tech-savvy or because I had anticipated this specific problem. It’s because I’ve learned – sometimes the hard way – that business continuity isn’t really about preparing for hurricanes or cyberattacks. It’s about being ready for ordinary things to go wrong at inconvenient times.
The Real Cost of “Small” Disruptions
In my work with healthcare organizations and small businesses, I’ve noticed something interesting. Leaders often have impressive plans for major emergencies – what to do if the building floods, how to respond to a data breach, and protocols for severe weather events. These plans are kept in binders, reviewed annually, and rarely needed.
But the small disruptions? Those happen constantly, and most organizations handle them poorly.
The office internet goes down for four hours. The billing person is sick on invoice day. The printer breaks during a credentialing deadline. The person with the only copy of the safety training materials is on vacation. Each one seems too minor to plan for, too ordinary to warrant a formal backup system.
Yet these small disruptions accumulate. They create stress, delay decisions, and, when they happen at exactly the wrong moment, cause real problems. A healthcare center misses a grant deadline because the grants manager’s computer failed. A small business loses a client proposal because its files were stored only locally. An HR team can’t process payroll on time because the payroll specialist’s laptop needs repairs.
None of these are dramatic. All of them are preventable.
Preparedness as a Practice, Not an Event
The shift in my thinking came about fifteen years ago when I was leading HR for a large international operation. We had comprehensive disaster recovery plans, but what actually disrupted our work were issues such as key people being unavailable, technology failing at routine times, or information being inaccessible when needed.
I started thinking about preparedness differently. Not as planning for unlikely catastrophes, but as building systems that could absorb ordinary friction without breaking stride.
This meant a few practical changes:
Information accessibility became the priority. If something is important enough to need, it should be accessible from anywhere, by anyone with proper authorization. Cloud storage wasn’t about disaster recovery – it was about making sure that when someone was traveling, working from home, or using a different device, they could still access what they needed.
Redundancy in routine things made sense. Not because we expected disasters, but because equipment fails, people get sick, and technology has inconvenient timing. A backup laptop doesn’t sit waiting for a crisis – it’s what you use when your primary device is being serviced. A second person trained on critical processes isn’t disaster planning – it’s vacation coverage.
Testing without drama became routine. Every few months, I’d work a full day from a different location using only my backup systems. Not because I expected my office to burn down, but because I wanted to know where the friction points were before they became a problem.
Applying This to Small Organizations
The beauty of this approach is that it scales perfectly to smaller operations. You don’t need enterprise-level systems or disaster recovery consultants. You need awareness and some basic redundancy.
For a solo practice or small business:
- Store documents in a cloud service (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) rather than only on your device
- Keep your contact list and calendar in a cloud-based system
- Have a backup device available – even an older laptop that can access your cloud storage
- Ensure at least one other person knows how to access critical information if you’re unavailable
- Test your backup approach occasionally, perhaps by working from a coffee shop using only your backup device
For slightly larger organizations with a small team:
- Cross-train team members on critical functions so no single person is a bottleneck
- Document important processes in a shared, accessible location
- Use cloud-based software for core functions (accounting, HR, scheduling)
- Maintain an inventory of who knows what and who can do what in a pinch
- Build in some slack – not every person should be operating at 100% capacity 100% of the time
None of this requires significant investment. A reliable cloud storage service costs less than $15 per month. Cross-training is essentially free. A backup device might cost a few hundred dollars or might be something you already own.
The Mindset Shift
What’s really required is a shift in mindset. We tend to think about business continuity in binary terms – either everything is fine, or there’s a disaster. But most of the business is neither. It’s a series of small challenges, minor equipment failures, unexpected absences, and routine disruptions.
Being prepared doesn’t mean planning for the worst-case scenario. It means building enough flexibility and redundancy into your operations that normal problems don’t become crises.
When my laptop display failed, I wasn’t exercising a disaster recovery plan. I was simply using systems I’d put in place because they made everyday work easier. The fact that they also protected me from larger disruptions was a bonus, not the primary purpose.
Starting Small
If you’re reading this and thinking, “I should probably have better backup systems,” you’re not alone. Most small business owners and solo practitioners operate with less redundancy than they’d like. The good news is that you don’t need to solve everything at once.
Start with the question: “What would happen if [thing] failed tomorrow?” Your laptop. Your internet connection. Your ability to access your office. The person who handles [critical function].
For each answer that makes you uncomfortable, implement one simple backup. Move those files to the cloud. Train someone else on that process. Buy that backup device. Document that procedure.
You’ll know you’re making progress when small disruptions no longer feel like emergencies but rather minor inconveniences. When you can have your laptop break on a Tuesday and still have a productive day.
Because in the end, business continuity isn’t about preparing for disasters. It’s about making sure that ordinary problems stay ordinary.
About the Author Mitch leads Waterloo Human Capital Management, providing fractional CHRO services to healthcare organizations and small businesses. After 30+ years of HR leadership across Fortune 500 companies and healthcare organizations, he helps leaders build sustainable, resilient operations.
https://www.waterloo-hcm.com