The 15-Minute Meeting Every Leadership Team Should Have

If an unexpected disruption hit your business tomorrow, how confident are you that everyone would know what to do?

Most leadership teams feel confident about their plans. They have backups for key systems, employees know who to contact, and processes keep things running.

However, having parts of a plan is not the same as knowing how everything fits together when things get tough. This difference often only shows up when something actually goes wrong. An internet outage, server failure, cybersecurity issue, cloud problem, power loss, or a missing vendor can quickly turn a regular day into an actual test of your team's communication, technology, decision-making, and planning.

When downtime happens, it can disrupt client service, production, access to important information, compliance tasks, and daily operations.

September is National Preparedness Month, making it a good opportunity to ask a simple question:

How prepared are we, really?

You don't need to spend all day planning to get started. Set aside 15 minutes with your leadership team and ask these five questions.

1. If Our Business Stopped Operating Tomorrow, What Would Need to Be Restored First?

When everything is running smoothly, it can seem like every system matters. But when something goes wrong, your real priorities stand out. If your business lost access to its technology tomorrow, which systems would you need first to keep serving customers and operating?

For a financial or tax firm, access to client records and critical financial applications may come first. A manufacturer might prioritize production systems, inventory management, and order processing. Aerospace and defense organizations may depend heavily on engineering and production systems or access to controlled information. Healthcare organizations may need to focus on systems supporting patient care and daily operations.

There's no universal answer. What's important is that your organization has an answer.

Figuring out these priorities ahead of time helps your IT team or provider know what to restore first. Instead of trying to bring everything back at once, they can focus on the systems that matter most to keep the business running.

2. Who Makes the Decisions When Something Goes Wrong?

When something goes wrong, unclear responsibilities can show up fast. Something stops working, IT gets called, employees have questions, customers want updates, and leadership wants to know when things will be fixed.

And suddenly, five different conversations are happening at once. Who has the authority to make decisions? Who communicates with employees? Who contacts customers or clients? Who coordinates with IT providers and other vendors? If there are compliance or reporting requirements, who handles those?

You don't need a complex emergency plan. What matters is clear ownership. When everyone knows their role, they can focus on fixing the problem instead of figuring out who should do what.

3. How Would We Communicate If Our Normal Tools Weren't Available?

It's easy to forget about the communication tools we use every day because they usually work. Email, phones, and Microsoft Teams all work until suddenly one of them doesn't.

Imagine employees couldn't access email during an outage. Where would they receive instructions? If your phone system went down, how would customers reach you? If Teams or another collaboration platform became unavailable, how would leadership coordinate the response?

Another challenge: during a cybersecurity incident, a communication system might still work, but it may no longer be safe to use.

That's why a backup communication plan matters. It doesn't have to be complicated. Your team needs to know where to go, who to call, and what method to use if the usual one isn't working.

When the usual routine is gone, people need a reliable place to turn.

4. What's the One Thing Our Business Depends On More Than We Realize?

Every business relies on certain things. The riskiest ones are often the ones that go unnoticed because they're always there. It could be a key software platform, your internet connection, a cloud app, a special vendor, a server, or a piece of manufacturing equipment.

Sometimes, it's not even about technology. It might be one employee who knows an important process that no one else can do.

Ask your leadership team: What happens if that person, system, provider, or piece of equipment isn't available tomorrow?

If your answer is, "We'd have a serious problem," you've found something important to address. You might not need to replace it, but you could improve documentation, add backups, test recovery, cross-train staff, or get outside help.

The first step is to spot these dependencies before they become a single point of failure.

5. What Would We Wish We'd Done Yesterday?

Now put your leadership team in the middle of the hypothetical disruption. Systems are unavailable. Employees need direction. Customers are waiting.

What do you suddenly wish you'd taken care of yesterday?

You might wish you had tested your backups or, more importantly, confirmed you could actually recover from them. Maybe you wish emergency contacts were updated, a key process was documented, or everyone had agreed ahead of time on which systems to restore first.

Or perhaps you wish everyone knew who was supposed to make the call.

None of these tasks look urgent on a usual Tuesday, which is why they're easy to put off. Being prepared means making these decisions while you still have time, so your team can respond instead of reacting when something happens.

Where Does Your IT Provider Fit Into This?

After you go through these questions, you might notice something. Some answers will be clear right away.

Others may begin with:

"I think..."

"Probably..."

"I'm pretty sure..."

Those are the answers you should investigate further.

Your IT provider should help leadership check the technology behind your plan. This includes identifying key systems and dependencies, ensuring backups work, testing recovery, documenting your setup, and seeing how technology supports your broader business continuity goals.

For example, there's an important difference between saying:

“Our systems are backed up.”

and being able to say:

“We've successfully tested recovery, we know which systems will be restored first, and we know approximately how long it should take.”

One is just an assumption. The other is a proven plan. But being prepared isn't only IT's job. It takes people, processes, and technology all working together.

Your IT provider can make sure the technology is set. Leadership also needs to make sure the business is ready.

Put 15 Minutes on the Calendar

You don't need to leave this meeting with a huge disaster recovery plan. What matters is starting to ask better questions.

At your next leadership meeting, spend 15 minutes answering these five:

1. What needs to be restored first?

2. Who makes the decisions?

3. How will we communicate if our normal tools are unavailable?

4. What's our biggest operational dependency?

5. What would we wish we'd prepared today?

Write down your answers. Even more important, write down the questions no one can answer. These aren't failures; they're your preparedness to-do list and the gaps you should close before the next disruption.

The best time to find a gap in your business-continuity plan is not when your systems are down, your employees are waiting, and your customers are calling.

It's during a 15-minute meeting while everything is still working, before a gap turns into a crisis.