In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses tariffs and how businesses can be more resilient to external change and disruption.

As an in-house business continuity manager, I’ve always believed there should be a clear distinction between managing crises and incidents—whatever your organisation calls them—and addressing day-to-day or longer-term challenges that could affect operations.

If I was still working as an emergency planning manager (a role I left in 2003), I wouldn’t have seen it as my job to go to the CEO of Anglian Water and say, “You’ve got a sewage problem—I think you should do something about it.”. Strategic, long-term issues in the water industry weren’t my concern unless they escalated into an incident.

If there was a large sewage spill threatening wildlife, the environment, and becoming a news item, that would definitely fall under my remit. I suggest forming a crisis team, likely including the CEO, and managing the situation as an incident.

As business continuity professionals, we must have the ear of the CEO and be valued contributors to our organisation’s response, but we also need to choose our moments—offering advice on the right issues, at the right time.

The Monitoring Role

One of the most valuable contributions a business continuity manager can make is monitoring emerging events—whether global, like current tariffs and market volatility, or local, such as disruptions to logistics or supply chains.

Since we’re not always involved in the operational side of the business, we often have more time and perspective to pick up on external trends, case studies, near misses, or even unreported incidents shared among other continuity professionals.

This allows us to bring early warnings back to the business, check for similar vulnerabilities, and make sure the relevant teams are aware of potential risks.

Tariffs as a Trigger Event

With tariffs and trade issues dominating the news, you don’t need the business continuity manager to tell leadership there’s a problem. However, we can still play a valuable role.

I spoke with a client this week—an international manufacturing company that supplies to various sectors, including automotive. At the time of writing, cars entering the US market are subject to a 25% tariff. This situation is fast-moving and could change rapidly, but for now, their main challenge is recalculating their exposure daily to understand the impact on their financials and supply chain.

Applying Crisis Management Tools To Business Challenges

Where business continuity managers can really add value is in applying incident management tools and techniques to respond to ongoing disruption.

When major events like the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, and Brexit took place, I encouraged organisations to operate in a different mode—a kind of temporary operating regime designed to keep the business running to business-as-normal, but recognising that for a short period, the organisation needs to be ready to manage an incident caused by the event.

For the existing turmoil, organisations could adopt a ‘Tariff Operating Regime’.

The ‘Tariff Operating Regime’

Here’s how this could be structured:

• Dedicated team – A small group of people who are not involved in the day-to-day running of the business. This should include the business continuity manager and perhaps those with an administration role in supporting the team to carry out logging.
• Active monitoring – They monitor the situation daily and escalate issues or respond as needed.
• Use of crisis tools – Techniques such as situational awareness, information management, dynamic risk assessment, and structured decision-making can be used.
• Logging and documentation – Keep an incident log, record decisions, and collect communications to support a full debrief later.
• Clear escalation routes – Ensure there’s a defined path for escalation to senior managers, and establish a regular battle rhythm of meetings.
• Workstreams – Sub-groups may be formed to focus on different aspects of the incident (e.g. supply chain, finance, communications).
• Contingency planning – Prepare scenario-based contingency plans so responses are ready if the situation evolves in a particular direction.
• Communications – Draft both internal and external messaging in advance.

This work takes time and effort, but if the team is small and nimble, it can function alongside business-as-usual. It also provides reassurance to the CEO and leadership team that the situation is being monitored, and escalation paths are in place should the incident worsen.

Once the situation has stabilised, the team should complete a formal debrief, document lessons learned, and return to their day jobs.

Conclusion

We’re all living through an event that will affect us personally and the organisations we work for. For some organisations, the impact will be minor. For others, it could be major. And because this is a man-made political situation, we can’t accurately predict what direction it will take—or when it will end.

If you believe your organisation would benefit, I recommend you speak with your CEO or executive team and propose a tariff operating regime to help manage this evolving risk environment.

As business continuity practitioners, we must continue to demonstrate our value—not just during obvious crises, but in how we help the organisation stay one step ahead.