Disruption

Companies used to argue about words while the clock ran: is this an outage, an incident, a crisis? Disruption exists to end that argument, as the profession's single term for any event that interrupts normal delivery, regardless of cause. For leadership this matters because response should be triggered by impact, not by what the event happens to be called. One word, one doorway into the response machinery.

In practice the continuity policy defines disruption and sets thresholds: below a certain level line management handles the event, above it plans activate and escalation begins. The definition anchors the BIA, which asks what a disruption to each process would cost, and incident logs built on it feed board reporting. For example, a firm may classify anything that stops customer service for more than 2 hours, or affects more than 10% of customers, as a disruption requiring formal response. The cause, whether cyber, flood or supplier failure, changes the specialists involved, not the doorway.

The common error is cause-by-cause planning: one plan for fire, one for cyber, one for strikes, each with its own vocabulary. Mature practice is impact-based, with plans answering to loss of premises, people, systems or suppliers, whatever caused it. That is why a precise definition of disruption saves precious minutes at 2 a.m. In the ERGP programme, a chapter of Module 4 on crisis management works through recognising and classifying disruption.