This Week’s Resilience Brief: Two Risks to Watch + One Action to Take

Short, plain-English steps to cut your business's downtime; plus a two-minute mini-assessment and a personal fix.

Two Risks to Watch + One Action to Take 

In our area (GEMCC), about nine out of ten businesses will face a major disruption over a 25-year run. Closures usually aren’t about bad luck—they follow basic gaps: unclear roles, no rehearsal, and thin vendor coordination. This week: two risks to watch and one 10-minute action to cut downtime.
 

Risk #1 — Weather triggered outages
Short, fast storms and “blue-sky” equipment failures can knock out power or bandwidth. For many small or medium businesses, that means point-of-sale stalls, service delays, and confused customers at the door. The ripple effect shows up in lost hours, missed appointments, and a "longer than necessary" path to reopening.

Risk #2 — Supplier miss or late delivery 
One late truck or a stockout at your primary vendor can choke operations for a full day. If there’s no quick decision path for substitutions, partial service, or renegotiated timelines, small slips become cancellations, refunds, and a second day of catch-up.

Action (10 minutes): Create a shared quick contacts note
Open your phone and create a shared note titled “Outage & Vendor Quick-Contacts.” Add three numbers and keep them at the top: 1- your utility outage line, 2- your top supplier’s escalation number, and 3- your property manager or landlord contact. Share that note with your "second in command" and one "trusted frontline lead" (or whatever titles you decide to use and appropriate for your business). Decide Right Now who calls which number when the lights flicker or a critical delivery doesn’t arrive.

This Week's Focus Area: Leadership & Governance 
This is the basics: who decides, who calls, who closes, and who communicates, without debate. When these are clear and rehearsed, disruptions shrink from days to hours. Next week I’ll share the simple six-area snapshot I use to show your top gap, along with how the 30-Day Outage-Ready™ path works.?

I use a simple six-area check to see where downtime risk is highest. If you take the two-minute mini-assessment, you’ll see your top gap instantly, and I’ll send you one practical fix. If you want a guided path, the section below explains how the 30-Day Outage-Ready™ sprint works.


Take the 2-minute Mini-Assessment → You’ll see your top gap instantly and I'll send you t one practical fix.
→ Start the Mini-Assessment

Want a guided path? See how the 30-Day Outage-Ready™ sprint tackles one focus area at a time and lets you add future sprints as needed.
→ Take a Look at 30 Days to Outage Ready ™ 

P.S. Reply with the one outage you worry about most this quarter (Here). I’ll cover the top pick next week.

Questions anytime: warren@portersofporter.com