Are You Ready For When It Matters Most?
Most organisations assume they are prepared. These are the questions worth asking before disruption answers them for you.
Do you have plans in place?
Most organisations do. The harder question is whether they reflect how you operate today, not how you operated when they were written.
Do your people know their role?
Plans are delivered by people. When something happens, everyone needs to know who decides, who acts and what is expected of them, without reaching for a document.
Have they been tested under pressure?
A plan on a shelf is an assumption, not a capability. Until it is exercised against a realistic scenario, you cannot know where it holds and where it gives way.
Do you understand your vulnerabilities?
Few disruptions stay in one place. Knowing your interdependencies, your weak points and where they most need strengthening is what turns a plan into resilience you can depend on.
WHAT WE HELP YOU PREPARE FOR
Preparedness is easy to assume and harder to prove. Most organisations believe they are ready for disruption. Fewer have tested that belief. Before an incident does it for them, it is worth asking a few direct questions.
If any of the questions above gives you pause, that is exactly where we help. Whatever the cause of disruption, the demands on leadership are remarkably similar: clear decisions on incomplete information, made at pace and under scrutiny, while protecting people, operations and reputation. We help organisations understand which threats are most relevant to them, where those risks would land across their people, sites, systems, services and suppliers, and how prepared they are to respond.
The areas below are where we are most often asked to help. They are not a generic checklist; each is shaped around your risk profile, your sector and the way your organisation operates. Where deeper assessment is needed, this links directly to our organisational maturity, threat and vulnerability analysis work.
Cyber Attack
A cyber attack tests leadership as much as technology. The early picture is rarely clear, the impact can spread quickly across systems, data and operations, and decisions carry legal, regulatory and reputational weight. Senior leaders may need to act before the technical position is fully understood, turning complex and fast-changing information into clear strategic direction.
We help organisations prepare for the leadership and continuity challenges that sit outside the technical response. This includes working through how the organisation will continue to operate during severe IT degradation, what a minimum viable organisation looks like, which services and activities should be prioritised or paused, and what recovery should look like in practical terms.
These questions should not be answered for the first time during a live cyber incident. By then, communication may be degraded, information may be incomplete, normal systems may be unavailable and leadership attention will already be under intense pressure. The organisation needs to have worked through these choices in advance: what must continue, what can stop, what gets recovered first, what people should do when they cannot work normally, and who has the authority to make those calls.
We are actively engaged with organisations in this area and bring current, practical experience of developing, testing and refining cyber incident response arrangements at board, executive and organisational level. This includes board-level playbooks, strategic response arrangements, degraded operating models and wider organisational response plans. We help leadership teams stress-test assumptions, understand business interdependencies, clarify decision-making authority, and prepare for the realities of operating when technology, communications and normal business processes are severely degraded.
We help senior teams test decision-making, escalation, command arrangements and communications before they are needed, so they are better prepared to lead a prolonged, high-scrutiny incident without losing control of it.
Power And Utilities Failure
The loss of power, water, gas, telecoms or other essential services can disrupt an organisation within minutes. The cause may sit entirely outside its control, recovery timelines may be uncertain, and the impact can cascade quickly across sites, systems, people and critical functions.
National power disruption is a particularly serious planning scenario. Severe weather, winter demand pressures, infrastructure failure or wider electricity system disruption can create the possibility of prolonged outages, regional disruption or rolling power interruptions. Organisations need to understand what this would mean in practice before it happens.
We help organisations prepare for the leadership, continuity and operational challenges created by sustained power and utilities failure. This includes working through what must continue, what can safely stop, which sites or services should be prioritised, how staff and customers will be protected, and how decisions will be made when normal communications, systems, access control, heating, lighting, IT or facilities are degraded.
These choices should be worked through in advance. A live outage is not the time to discover that critical assumptions have not been tested, generator arrangements are unclear, staff welfare plans are incomplete, or priority services cannot operate as expected.
Our work in this area includes helping organisations develop and refine plans, stress-test assumptions, and design exercises ranging from focused leadership discussions to large-scale multi-department events. This helps organisations understand business interdependencies, test whether plans work in practice, build shared awareness across functions, and improve confidence before disruption occurs.
We help teams test command arrangements, escalation routes, communications and business continuity plans against realistic outage scenarios, so the response holds together even when the disruption is widespread, sustained or uncertain.
Major Incident
A fire, crash, collision, security incident or other sudden event can escalate within moments, with consequences for life safety, public confidence, service continuity and the standing of the organisation. Some incidents may form part of a formal multi-agency response; others may not meet that threshold but still create significant operational, reputational, regulatory and leadership demands.
We help organisations prepare for incidents that require clear command, rapid coordination and defensible decision-making under pressure. This includes supporting Category 1 and Category 2 responders to understand their responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, strengthen multi-agency working, and apply Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP), including use of the Joint Decision Model (JDM).
We also work with other organisations that may be directly affected by, or required to respond to, serious incidents involving their people, customers, services, infrastructure or reputation. In these situations, leaders may need to work alongside emergency services, regulators, partner agencies, contractors, families, the media and government bodies, often before the full facts are known.
We help develop and test command arrangements, escalation routes, strategic decision-making, stakeholder communications and incident response plans. This includes rehearsing how senior leaders establish authority, coordinate with partners, support those affected, manage public and regulatory scrutiny, and maintain control of the organisation’s response as the incident develops.
The aim is a calm, compassionate and structured response that is understood before it is needed, works alongside the wider emergency response, and can withstand scrutiny afterwards.
Insider Threat
Harm that comes from within, whether through malice, coercion, divided loyalties, poor judgement or negligence, is uniquely difficult to manage. It reaches into trust, security, human resources, legal, welfare and reputational matters at the same time. The information is often sensitive and incomplete, and a clumsy response can cause as much damage as the original act.
We help organisations prepare to identify, escalate and manage insider threat concerns with care and control. This includes clarifying decision-making across security, people, legal, information governance and senior leadership functions, testing how sensitive information is held and shared, and ensuring that concerns are assessed proportionately before action is taken.
These incidents require a disciplined approach. Organisations need to know who owns the response, how evidence will be protected, when HR or legal processes should begin, when external advice or law enforcement engagement may be needed, and how the rights and welfare of individuals will be protected while organisational risk is managed.
This work is informed by deep, real-world experience from decades of UK Police Service work at senior level, including intelligence leadership, serious and organised crime, covert and overt investigation, and qualified Senior Investigating Officer roles. We bring a strong understanding of evidence, confidentiality, proportionality, safeguarding, legal process and reputational risk, helping organisations handle sensitive insider concerns with care, structure and judgement.
We help teams develop and test insider threat arrangements, escalation routes, information-sharing protocols and leadership decision-making, so they are better prepared to act lawfully, proportionately and confidently when trust, evidence, reputation and organisational security are all at stake.
Protest And Activism
Protest and activism can disrupt operations, attract sustained media and public attention, and place people, assets and reputation under pressure. The response is seldom straightforward. Too firm a hand and the organisation can become the story; too little and safety, continuity, staff confidence or public trust may begin to suffer.
We help organisations prepare for the leadership, security, communications and continuity challenges created by protest and activist activity. This includes working through likely protest tactics, operational vulnerabilities, decision-making thresholds, escalation routes, stakeholder communications and the balance between lawful protest, organisational resilience and public perception.
This work is informed by decades of real-world UK Police Service experience at senior command level, including the planning and command of some of the UK’s largest and most complex public order and protest events in London and beyond. This includes experience across environmental, political, ideological, single-issue, extreme-right and extreme-left protest activity, as well as intelligence-led planning to understand threat, risk, intent, capability and likely tactics.
We help organisations work effectively with police, partner agencies and, where appropriate, protest or campaign groups. Our real-world professional experience includes developing strategic and tactical plans for policing large-scale public order operations, giving us a practical understanding of police decision-making, legal thresholds, command structures and operational constraints. This allows us to support organisations to engage constructively and confidently, understand what information is useful, make proportionate requests, and balance the right to protest with the rights of staff, customers, communities and businesses affected by serious disruption.
We help organisations stress-test their arrangements before protest activity places them under pressure. This can include scenario planning, executive workshops, security and communications coordination, command arrangements, decision logs, liaison with police and partners, and exercises that help teams understand how they will protect people, maintain continuity and respond proportionately.
The aim is a response that is lawful, calm, defensible and aligned to the organisation’s values, while protecting safety, continuity and reputation when attention is high.
Supply Chain Disruption
A supplier failure, logistics breakdown, industrial action, labour shortage, transport disruption or loss of a critical third-party service can affect an organisation far beyond its own walls. The impact often builds quietly, dependencies are not always visible, and the ability to recover may sit partly or entirely with organisations outside direct control.
Modern operating models often rely on lean processes, just-in-time delivery, tightly managed stock levels, outsourced services and complex third-party dependencies. These approaches can be highly efficient, but they can also reduce tolerance for disruption when a key supplier, route, system, site, workforce or service fails.
We help organisations understand what supply chain disruption would mean in practice. This includes surfacing critical dependencies, identifying single points of failure, clarifying which services or products must be prioritised, and working through fallback arrangements when normal supply, logistics, staffing or support arrangements are unavailable.
These decisions should not be left until disruption is already affecting customers, operations or service delivery. Organisations need to understand who has authority to make prioritisation decisions, what can be stopped or slowed, what alternatives are realistic, and how internal teams, suppliers, customers and partners will be kept informed.
We help teams develop, stress-test and exercise supply chain disruption plans against realistic cascading scenarios. The aim is to improve visibility of dependencies, test whether fallback arrangements will work in practice, and build confidence that the organisation can adapt quickly while protecting its most important services.
Terrorism And Security
A terrorist attack or serious security threat is rare, but its consequences are among the most severe an organisation can face. Events move quickly, the safety of people comes first, and leaders may need to act alongside police, emergency services, regulators and security partners while meeting a clear duty of care to staff, customers and the public.
We help organisations prepare for hostile, security-related and terrorism-linked incidents, including marauding attacks, suspicious activity, hostile reconnaissance, serious threats, lockdown, evacuation, invacuation and protective security decision-making. This includes clarifying command, authority, escalation, communications and the interface with police and security partners before an incident occurs.
This work is informed by real-world UK counter-terrorism policing and protective security experience. Our background includes qualified police Security Coordinator (SeCCo) roles, and accreditation as marauding terrorist attack (MTA) police Silver Commanders for London. It also includes senior public order command experience connected to some of the highest-security events in the UK, including state visits and major protected events. We bring a practical understanding of police planning, protective security, command structures, threat assessment, site vulnerabilities and the operational realities of working with emergency services.
We support organisations with protective security planning, NPSA-aligned assessments, building security reviews, marauding terrorist attack planning, exercising and senior leadership preparedness. For organisations within scope of Martyn’s Law, we can also help leaders understand what preparedness means in practice and how their plans, people, premises and decision-making arrangements would stand up under pressure.
The aim is a response that protects people, supports effective coordination with police and partners, and gives senior leaders confidence that their security arrangements are practical, proportionate and capable of withstanding scrutiny after a serious incident.
Extreme Weather
Flooding, storms, heatwaves, snow, ice and other severe conditions can disrupt organisations quickly and at scale. They can threaten the safety of people and sites, interrupt transport, utilities, supply chains and communications, and affect whole regions at once. The consequences often extend beyond the weather event itself, with recovery stretching across days rather than hours.
We help organisations prepare for the leadership, continuity and operational challenges created by severe weather. This includes working through how people, sites and critical services will be protected, what should continue or stop, how decisions will be made when disruption is widespread, and how the organisation will coordinate across functions, locations, suppliers and partners.
This work is informed by practical experience supporting critical national infrastructure and transport-sector organisations, to prepare for extreme weather disruption. We understand how heat, cold, storms, flooding and regional infrastructure impacts can affect safety, service delivery, asset resilience, staffing, passenger or customer welfare, communications and recovery.
We help teams develop, stress-test and exercise severe weather plans against realistic scenarios. This includes early warning and escalation, command arrangements, decision thresholds, business continuity, welfare arrangements, communications, recovery planning and coordination with external partners.
The aim is to help organisations act early, protect people, maintain control of priority services where possible, and recover effectively when severe weather creates widespread or prolonged disruption.