Crisis Management and Business Continuity Course
90% of Businesses Without a Continuity Plan Fail Within a Year of a Major Disruption.
According to FEMA, that failure rate isn't about the disaster itself, it's about what happens in the weeks after, when a business with no plan is inventing its response in real time. Separately, the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation found that 94% of businesses believe they'd recover from a disaster, while only 26% actually have a plan in place. That gap between confidence and preparation is where this course sits. It builds the genuine capability to lead through a crisis and keep the organisation running, not a document that sits untested until the day it's needed.
Organisations without genuine crisis capability typically experience:
- A continuity plan that exists on paper, has never been tested, and turns out to be unworkable exactly when it's needed
- No clear decision authority during a crisis, so critical calls stall while people wait for permission
- Internal and external communication that contradicts itself in the first confused hours of a disruption
- Recovery time and recovery point targets nobody actually verified against what's achievable
- A single point of failure, one system, one supplier, one person, that takes down far more than it should
- Reputational damage that outlasts the operational disruption by months, because the response itself was chaotic
This course builds crisis leadership and continuity planning as one connected discipline, tested before it's needed, not discovered to be inadequate during the disaster itself.
Who Should Attend
Senior Leaders and Executives
Who carry ultimate responsibility for organisational survival through a major disruption.
Risk, Compliance and Operations Managers
Building or owning the continuity plan and needing it to be genuinely workable, not a compliance document.
Communications and PR Professionals
Responsible for internal and external messaging in the critical early hours of a crisis.
Facilities and IT Managers
Managing the infrastructure dependencies a continuity plan actually rests on.
NGO and Humanitarian Sector Staff
Operating in contexts where disruption is a routine operational reality, not a remote possibility.
Business Owners and SME Leaders
Whose organisations carry the least redundancy and the most exposure when disruption hits.
What You Will Leave With
A tested plan and the leadership skill to run it under real pressure.
Programme Curriculum
Why this module matters: A continuity plan built without first understanding which functions genuinely can't stop, and for how long, protects the wrong things or protects everything equally and affordably protects nothing.
- Identifying critical business functions and their genuine tolerance for downtime
- Risk assessment across categories: natural disaster, cyberattack, supplier failure, civil disruption
- Single points of failure: finding them before they find you
- Setting recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives realistically
- Prioritising continuity investment where the impact analysis actually points
Why this module matters: A plan that exists only as a document nobody has read is not a plan. This module builds one designed to actually be used under pressure by people who are frightened and short on time.
- Structuring a plan for use under pressure, not for filing away
- Data protection and recovery: backups, redundancy and recovery infrastructure
- Supply chain and vendor continuity dependencies
- Alternate work arrangements and facility contingencies
- Assigning clear roles, authority and decision rights before the crisis, not during it
Why this module matters: The best continuity plan fails if the people running it can't make clear decisions under pressure or communicate consistently while the situation is still unfolding.
- Decision-making under time pressure and incomplete information
- Establishing a crisis command structure with clear authority
- Internal communication: keeping staff informed without creating panic
- External communication: media, customers and stakeholders during an active crisis
- Maintaining composure and clear judgement as a visible leader during the disruption
Why this module matters: Roughly a third of disaster recovery tests fail, and most organisations only discover their targets are unachievable after a real event. This module builds the testing discipline that catches gaps in advance.
- Running tabletop exercises and simulated crisis scenarios
- Identifying and closing gaps the test reveals, honestly rather than defensively
- Managing the extended recovery period after the immediate crisis passes
- Post-incident review: capturing lessons without assigning blame that discourages future honesty
- Capstone: a business continuity plan and tabletop exercise for your own organisation, with peer review
Common Questions
The Plan That's Never Been Tested Isn't a Plan.
Join leaders and risk professionals building continuity capability that's tested, workable, and ready before it's ever actually needed.
📅 Upcoming Schedules
📅 No upcoming schedules at the moment.
View All SchedulesWe run this course as a private programme for organisations. Bespoke dates, tailored content, group pricing.
Every course starts with a needs assessment and includes structured follow-up at three points after it ends.
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