The 15-Minute Meeting Every Leadership Team Should Have

1. If our business stopped operating tomorrow, what would need to come back first?

You probably already know which tools your team leans on every day. But recovery planning demands a more specific answer: Which functions protect your customers, your revenue, and your daily work first?

That could mean customer support, payment processing, scheduling, order fulfillment, or simply access to the files employees need to keep work moving. The answer varies for every business, but the goal stays the same — identify what can’t sit idle for long. When you define those priorities early, your team can focus on what matters most instead of trying to restore everything at once.

This is exactly where tested data backup and recovery earns its keep. Knowing what to restore first only helps if you’ve actually confirmed those systems will come back when you need them.

2. Who is responsible for making decisions during a disruption?

Pressure has a way of exposing unclear ownership fast. When people don’t know who can make the call, they wait for approval, duplicate work, or pull leaders into separate conversations that slow the whole response down.

Your team should know who starts the response, who updates employees, who communicates with customers, and who works with vendors, service providers, or IT partners. These roles don’t need to create a complicated chain of command — they need to remove confusion when timing matters.

Clear decision-making roles help people act with confidence when normal routines break down. As we wrote in When the Emergency Hits, It’s Too Late to Plan, the emergency is the time to execute the plan, not build it.

3. How would we communicate if our normal tools weren’t available?

Email, phones, and collaboration platforms feel dependable — right up until they stop working. Then even simple communication becomes harder than it should be.

If employees couldn’t access their email, would they know where to look for instructions? If your phone system failed, how would customers reach your team? If your usual collaboration tool went down, where would leadership share updates and assign work?

A backup communication plan doesn’t need to be complex. It needs to give employees and customers a dependable place to turn when the usual channels aren’t available. For businesses that have outgrown traditional lines, a cloud-based VoIP system can keep calls routing to mobile softphones and alternate devices even when your primary setup is down — so customers still reach a person, not a dead line.

4. What’s our biggest operational dependency?

Some risks hide in plain sight because they support the business every day without drawing attention.

It may be one software platform, an internet connection, a third-party provider, or the one employee who knows a process nobody else fully understands. These dependencies may not seem risky during normal operations, but a single failure can affect multiple parts of the business at the same time. If your business depends heavily on one system, one provider, or one person, it’s critical to understand what happens when that dependency suddenly isn’t available.

This is also why network security can’t be treated as a separate line item. A breach in one heavily relied-on system can cascade across your entire operation in minutes. Clarity here helps you decide where documentation, testing, backup options, or outside support could reduce avoidable risk.

5. If a disruption took place tomorrow, what would we wish we’d prepared today?

This question cuts through assumptions because it puts leaders inside the moment they’re trying to avoid.

Your team may wish it had documented a process, tested backups, updated contact lists, identified responsibilities, or agreed on the order in which systems should come back online. None of those tasks sound dramatic during a normal week — which is exactly why teams push them aside.

If “tested backups” made your list, you’re not alone. We broke down exactly which assumptions cost businesses the most in The 4 Most Expensive Backup Assumptions Businesses Make. Preparation gives you room to respond instead of react. The best recovery plans answer questions before anyone has to ask them.

Where an IT provider comes in

After working through these five questions, you’ll know which answers feel solid and which rely on assumptions. That’s where the right IT partner makes the difference.

A good provider helps identify operational risks, test recovery processes, verify backups, document key systems, and connect technology planning to your business goals. The point isn’t to make preparedness feel technical — it’s to help you understand how systems, people, and processes work together when pressure hits. And if you already have an internal IT team, co-managed IT services ensure they aren’t facing that pressure alone.

Put this meeting on your calendar

Don’t wait to schedule this 15-minute conversation.

If your leadership team can answer all five questions clearly, you have a strong sense of how your business would respond under pressure. If some answers feel uncertain, you’ve found the gaps that need addressing before they affect operations.

Schedule a discovery call with Univision Computers — your best friend in technology — to identify potential gaps, strengthen your preparedness strategy, and build a recovery plan that supports your business before you need it.

Call us at 800-597-6623 or book your discovery call here.