What questions might a leader face on a difficult morning? In this special podcast series, Marc Duncan, Bridget Lee-Young, and Scott Pickett of Salus Solutions explain one useful idea for a variety of corporate professionals, such as risk and compliance leaders and anti-bribery and corruption professionals, and then demonstrate how that idea changes a decision. This podcast is also for police and fire chiefs, emergency managers, finance and operations executives, CEOs, boards, and leaders of commercial, public, and private organizations. Over the next four weeks, we’ll run this special series.
In Episode 5, we consider documenting risk decisions, ownership, and insurance in continuity gaps. Today, the panel discusses leadership authority and decision ownership when a business continuity gap is identified, emphasizing options beyond “do nothing” or “buy something.” They describe remediation through procedural fixes (fallback procedures, contact lists, temporary workarounds, alternate communications), durable fixes (redundant vendors, schedule changes, pre-positioning resources), and deliberately accepting risk if it is documented, revisited, and informed by changing time horizons. The panel stresses documenting decision factors and dissenting views and using specialized experts, including insurance carriers, to compare coverage costs with outage losses and to address insurability gaps identified through assessments. They introduce pivot plans, tripwires/decision gates, and mandatory leadership sign-offs for policy exceptions and explain SAL CAPA as a tool to record who decided what, assign owners and deadlines, and preserve rationale without replacing leadership. The episode ends with a RiverBend scenario recap and a teaser on turning plans into real capability.
Key highlights:
- What options should leadership see besides “buy something” or “do nothing” when a continuity gap has been identified?
- How do you explain the evidence, uncertainty, cost, operational effect, and remaining risk of each option in language a board can use?
- Who may recommend an action, who may authorize it, and who is responsible for executing it?
- If compliance and operations disagree about urgency, how can they surface the disagreement constructively?
- What does a defensible decision record capture: what was known, assessed, recommended, decided, assigned, and completed?
- What does it mean for a leader to knowingly accept residual risk, and when should they revisit that choice?
- How does SalCAPA help coordinate information and responsibilities without substituting for leadership?
- What would a finance officer need to see to fund a near-term workaround while a more durable solution is assessed?
Questions for Our Listeners: A signed decision can still leave people exposed if no one can perform it on a difficult day. Who will turn your approved plan into working capability? Next time, we follow the action.
About Salus Solutions: “Salus helps organizations understand what matters, make informed protective decisions, and carry them into action. SalCAPA is the method and coordination environment that connects those steps.”
Salus Solutions sponsors this podcast series.