Regulators, insurers, donors and customers increasingly ask not only whether an organisation has a continuity plan but whether it can keep delivering important services through a severe but plausible disruption. A plan on a shelf that nobody has rehearsed rarely survives first contact with a real incident. The weaknesses are usually about leadership: unclear authority, slow decisions, poor information flow and untested assumptions about suppliers and technology.

This advanced programme focuses on the leadership and performance side of business continuity and operational resilience. Participants begin by defining critical services and the people, processes, technology, facilities and third parties that support them. They set impact tolerances and recovery targets, assess gaps against the ISO 22301 approach and decide where investment will make the biggest difference. The programme then moves to command and control during a crisis, covering escalation, decision making under pressure, communication and recovery, followed by exercise design, assurance and continual improvement.

Teaching is built around scenarios that unfold in stages, forcing participants to make and defend decisions. By the end, each participant has a resilience roadmap for their organisation, a draft crisis leadership protocol and a performance dashboard suitable for executive and board review.

On completion, participants will be able to:

• Identify critical services and map the dependencies that support them.
• Conduct and challenge a business impact analysis and set impact tolerances.
• Align continuity strategy with risk appetite, ISO 22301 principles and board expectations.
• Establish crisis governance, roles, escalation triggers and decision rights.
• Lead decision making and communication during a severe disruption.
• Design and facilitate tabletop and simulation exercises that expose real weaknesses.
• Define resilience performance measures and report them to executives.
• Embed a culture of preparedness and continual improvement across departments.

The programme is aimed at leaders who own or influence organisational resilience, including:

• Chief operating officers and operations directors
• Heads of risk, compliance and internal control
• Business continuity and disaster recovery managers
• IT service, infrastructure and information security leaders
• Facilities, estates and security managers
• Programme directors in NGOs and humanitarian agencies
• Senior officers in ministries, county governments and state corporations
• Bank and insurance operations executives

Participants leave with leadership tools they can apply immediately:

• A critical services and dependency map for their organisation.
• Draft impact tolerances and recovery targets for priority services.
• A crisis leadership protocol with roles, triggers and a decision log template.
• An exercise plan with scenario scripts for a tabletop session.
• A resilience dashboard with indicators for board reporting.
• A prioritised roadmap for strengthening continuity over the next twelve months.

The format puts participants in the leader's seat. It includes:

• Staged crisis scenarios with timed injects that demand decisions
• Executive briefings and case reviews of real disruption events
• Template workshops for impact analysis and tolerance setting
• Peer challenge sessions in which roadmaps are tested by other leaders
• Individual coaching feedback on communication and command style

Participants who complete the scenario exercises and attend all sessions are issued with a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion by Vision Reach Global Consultancy. It evidences advanced professional development in continuity and resilience leadership.