The Day My Emergency Plan Became a Netflix Comedy Special

Nobody ever thinks their business will be the one where the sprinkler system activates during the quarterly board meeting, flooding three floors while the CEO is mid-pitch to investors. Yet here I was, standing ankle-deep in murky water, watching twenty years of carefully curated corporate reputation literally going down the drain.

That Tuesday changed everything for me.

Our Favourite Blogs:

• Brand Local Posts
• Learning Network Blog

Contingency training isn't just about having a plan—it's about having a dozen plans, plus the mental agility to throw them all out the window when reality hits you in the face like a wet fish. Most businesses treat contingency planning like they treat fire drills: a necessary evil that interrupts actual work. This is categorically wrong, and I'll die on this hill.

After consulting for over 15 years across Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, I've seen companies that thrived during lockdowns while their competitors crumbled. The difference? They'd invested in proper contingency training, not just dusty manuals stuffed in filing cabinets.

The statistics are sobering. Research indicates that 78% of businesses that experience a major disruption without adequate contingency training fail within two years. Compare this to companies with robust contingency frameworks—their survival rate jumps to 89%. Yet most organisations spend more money on coffee than they do on crisis preparedness.

Here's what drives me mental: executives who think contingency training means a one-hour PowerPoint presentation and a laminated emergency contact sheet. That's not training—that's corporate theatre.

Real crisis leadership training involves scenarios that make people uncomfortable. You need to simulate the chaos, the pressure, the moment when your primary supplier vanishes overnight or your key client threatens to walk.

I remember working with a mid-sized manufacturing firm in Adelaide—let's call them SteelCorp—who thought they had everything sorted. Beautiful emergency procedures, colour-coded flowcharts, the works. Then their main supplier got bought out by a competitor and immediately cancelled all contracts. Chaos.

Their contingency plan assumed suppliers would give reasonable notice. Reality had other ideas.

Here's my controversial opinion: most contingency training fails because it's too polite. We sanitise scenarios, avoid the messy human elements, and pretend everyone will follow procedures like robots. Absolute rubbish.

People panic. They make irrational decisions. They blame each other. Your contingency training needs to account for this reality, not some idealised version where everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya.

The companies that excel at contingency management—think Woolworths during the early pandemic panic buying, or how Telstra handled the 2019-2020 bushfire season—these organisations drill their people relentlessly. They run tabletop exercises quarterly, not annually. They promote the person who asks uncomfortable "what if" questions, not the one who says everything's fine.

But here's where it gets interesting. True contingency mastery isn't about predicting the future—it's about building adaptive capacity. You can't plan for every scenario, but you can train people to think on their feet.

The best contingency training I've witnessed involved a pharmaceutical company in Sydney who ran a simulation where their entire IT system "failed" for a week. No computers, no digital records, just paper and phones. Half the staff nearly had nervous breakdowns. The other half figured out workarounds that ended up improving their processes permanently.

That's the gold standard: training that prepares you for everything by preparing you for nothing specific.

Most managers hate this approach because it feels chaotic. They want neat boxes and clear procedures. But uncertainty is the only certainty in business. Your contingency training should reflect this uncomfortable truth.

There's another element most organisations miss entirely: emotional contingency planning. When crisis hits, people don't just need to know what to do—they need to manage their emotional responses. Fear clouds judgment. Stress makes smart people do stupid things.

I learned this the hard way during a project in Perth where a client's warehouse fire triggered a complete supply chain meltdown. The technical response was textbook perfect, but the team fell apart emotionally. Finger-pointing, blame games, relationship damage that took months to repair.

Now I always include psychological resilience components in contingency training. Not touchy-feely nonsense, but practical tools for managing stress under pressure. How to communicate when everyone's panicking. How to make decisions with incomplete information. How to maintain team cohesion when everything's falling apart.

The return on investment here is massive. Companies with comprehensive contingency training report 43% faster recovery times from major disruptions. Their employee retention during crises is significantly higher too—people stick around when they feel prepared and supported.

But let's be honest about the obstacles. CFOs see contingency training as a cost centre, not an investment. "We've never needed it before" is the corporate equivalent of driving without insurance because you've never had an accident.

This mindset drives me absolutely barmy.

The businesses thriving in 2025 are the ones who learned from COVID-19 disruptions, supply chain chaos, and cyber attacks. They've moved beyond basic emergency procedures to sophisticated adaptive capabilities.

Take Bunnings—love them or hate them, their contingency response has been phenomenal. They've maintained operations through floods, fires, and pandemics because they've invested in training that goes beyond procedures to develop genuine organisational resilience.

Your contingency training should include scenario planning that seems almost ridiculous. What if your entire leadership team gets food poisoning at the same conference? What if your biggest competitor poaches your top five performers in the same week? What if social media turns against your brand overnight?

These scenarios force people to think creatively about solutions rather than just memorising steps.

The most effective contingency training I've designed follows a simple principle: prepare for everything by being ready for anything. This means building decision-making capabilities, not just decision-making procedures.

You need people who can evaluate unfamiliar situations quickly, communicate clearly under pressure, and adapt plans in real-time. This requires practice, not just planning.

Start with small disruptions. Cancel a regular meeting at the last minute and see how your team adapts. Change a key supplier for a non-critical item. Introduce unexpected complications to routine projects.

Build the muscle memory of adaptation before you need it for real emergencies.

The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty—it's to get comfortable operating within it. Companies that master this approach don't just survive disruptions; they often emerge stronger than before.

My flooding incident taught me that perfect plans are impossible, but prepared people are invaluable. The team that kept our operations running while standing in ankle-deep water didn't follow any manual—they improvised based on solid training principles.

That's contingency training done right: not rigid procedures, but flexible thinking. Not perfect plans, but prepared people.

The businesses still operating after the next major disruption will be the ones investing in this training today. The ones waiting for certainty will still be waiting when their competitors have moved on without them.