Time to Planning — The Cost of Getting It Wrong

I built a business continuity program exactly the way I was supposed to.

And it still didn’t work.

Doing It “The Right Way”

When I stepped into a Business Continuity Manager role, I followed the standard approach.

Start with a tool.

Stand up the program.

Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA).

Use the results to prioritize planning.

It was structured. Proven. Widely accepted.

And it made sense—at least on paper.

So I got to work.

The Timeline No One Talks About

I started in July.

The first step was selecting a business continuity platform. That alone took time—evaluating options, aligning stakeholders, getting approvals.

Then came implementation.

Configuration.

Data models.

User setup.

Training.

By the time we were ready to begin the BIA process, months had already passed.

Then came data collection.

Interviews.

Surveys.

Follow-ups.

Analysis.

And finally—by February—we had results.

We could identify which areas of the business needed continuity plans.

Seven months in, we were ready to start planning.

The Problem

By the time I knew where to focus, the business had already moved on.

Operations had changed.

Priorities had shifted.

New risks had emerged.

And the people we needed to engage?

They were already fatigued.

From their perspective, we had spent months asking questions—and hadn’t delivered anything they could use.

Defining the Real Issue: Time to Planning

This is the gap most programs don’t account for.

The time between:

Identifying risk → Creating something actionable

In traditional models, that timeline is measured in months.

Sometimes longer.

And during that time, the business doesn’t stand still.

Why This Matters More Than It Seems

The longer it takes to move from insight to action:

The less accurate your outputs become

The harder it is to maintain engagement

The more your program is seen as theoretical rather than practical

Plans don’t fail because they’re poorly written.

They fail because they’re already outdated.

A Pattern I Had Already Seen

This wasn’t the first time something felt off.

Earlier in my career, I had seen a different approach work in a completely different environment.

At Diamond C Trailers, a fast-growing manufacturing company, the traditional model broke down quickly.

The business didn’t operate on fixed recovery time objectives.

It operated on flow—on how production moved, where dependencies existed, and how disruptions actually impacted output.

Instead of spending months collecting data, we focused on understanding that flow directly.

The result was immediate clarity.

We didn’t need to wait to start planning.

Planning happened alongside understanding.

The Core Issue

Traditional business continuity assumes a stable environment.

One where you can:

Collect data

Analyze it

Build plans

Maintain them over time

But that’s not how most organizations operate today.

They are constantly evolving.

Which means any process that takes months to produce value is already behind.

What Needs to Change

Planning can’t be a delayed outcome.

It has to happen at the same speed as the business.

That doesn’t mean rushing.

It means removing the gap between:

Understanding → Action

It means replacing long, sequential processes with something continuous.

Something that evolves as the business evolves.

A Different Approach

At Riffle, this is a core focus.

Reducing the time it takes to move from:

Visibility → Understanding

Understanding → Decision

Decision → Action

Instead of waiting months to begin planning, organizations can start immediately—with context that reflects how the business actually operates.

Planning becomes:

Incremental

Embedded

Continuously updated

Not something you complete.

Something you maintain in real time.

Closing

I didn’t fail because I didn’t follow the process.

I failed because the process took too long to matter.

And until that changes, most business continuity programs will continue to face the same challenge:

By the time they’re ready, the business has already moved on.