Over the past year, AI has become part of many organizations' daily operations. Writing. Research. Software development. Customer service. Data analysis. Decision support. For many teams, AI has quietly shifted from being a helpful productivity tool to becoming an operational dependency. That raises an important leadership question: What happens if your primary AI platform becomes unavailable tomorrow morning? Not because of a cyberattack. Not because of anything your organization did wrong. Just because the service is unavailable. Would work continue? Would deadlines slip? Would your team know what to do? This isn't really an AI question. It's an operational resilience question. Every organization depends on technology. AI is simply another dependency to understand and manage. The goal isn't to avoid using AI. The efficiency gains are real. The goal is to avoid becoming dependent on any single technology without understanding the consequences if it's temporarily unavailable. Technology disruptions are inevitable. Operational paralysis doesn't have to be. Organizations that build resilience ask these questions before they need the answers. 💬 Discussion If your organization's primary AI platform became unavailable for the next 24 hours—with no warning—what business process would be impacted first? Would your team know exactly how to continue operating?

According to Girdwood Fire & Rescue, that's all it took to knock out power to all of Girdwood this morning. Not ransomware. Not a sophisticated cyberattack. A raven. It reminded me that organizations often prepare for the dramatic scenarios... ...while forgetting that a single, unexpected event can have the same operational impact. The cause isn't always what matters most. The consequence is. Operational survival isn't about predicting every possible disruption. It's about building the capability to keep operating no matter what causes it. Discussion: What's the "raven" in your organization? What seemingly small dependency could have an outsized operational impact if it suddenly failed?

@Jim Bates , @Niel Smith , @Emily J I'm glad you're here. This community is for leaders who believe resilience is about more than cybersecurity—it's about keeping organizations operating when critical technology fails. Whether you're here to learn, share experiences, or challenge your thinking, I encourage you to jump into the discussions. Your perspective is valuable, and we're all here to learn from one another. Welcome aboard!

In cybersecurity, there's an interesting concept called the security poverty line. It describes organizations that lack the minimum people, resources, or capabilities needed to implement even basic cybersecurity practices. But here's something worth thinking about... An organization can be well above the security poverty line—and still be operationally fragile. It may have invested heavily in cybersecurity: • Multi-factor authentication • Backups • Endpoint protection • Security monitoring • Incident response support ...and still be unable to continue its most essential operations if critical technology suddenly becomes unavailable. That's because cybersecurity capability and operational survival capability are not the same thing. Cybersecurity asks: "How do we reduce the likelihood and impact of an attack?" Operational survival asks: "How do we continue delivering our mission when the technology we depend on is no longer available?" Those are different questions. I think the gap between those two questions is where many organizations are most vulnerable. Discussion: If your organization's critical technology became unavailable tomorrow, what essential service would be the hardest to continue delivering? More importantly, do you already know how you'd keep it running?

This week, several organizations publicly reported operational disruption following cyber incidents. One organization couldn't process property transactions. Another temporarily suspended production. What struck me wasn't the attack itself. It was the assumption that operations had to stop until technology was restored. That raises an important leadership question: Is shutting down your only safe option? Sometimes the answer is yes. Safety, regulatory requirements, or product integrity may leave no alternative. But if every major technology disruption results in a complete operational shutdown, it's worth asking another question: Have we designed our operations to survive technology failure, or have we designed them to depend on perfect technology? That's the difference between recovery and operational survival. Recovery asks: "How quickly can we restore our systems?" Operational survival asks: "How do we continue delivering our mission while those systems are unavailable?" 💬 Discussion question: If one critical technology your organization depends on disappeared tomorrow, what business function would leadership be most reluctant to stop—and why?