I have had the unfortunate experience of living and working through three major public health crises: SARS, H1N1, and COVID-19. While each event was different, they all reinforced the same lesson:

Preparedness is not about having a plan. It is about ensuring the plan works in reality.

Too often organizations build emergency plans in isolation, assuming that partners, stakeholders, and supporting agencies will simply fulfill their assigned roles when a crisis occurs. The reality is far more complicated.

The Day I Learned a Hard Lesson About Planning

During the early days of SARS, I attended a meeting involving local government agencies and the regional health authority. The Medical Health Officer presented projections suggesting that between 20% and 35% of the workforce could be absent due to illness. For frontline emergency services, the estimate was even higher between 40% and 50%.

Then came the expectation.

Police services, we were told, would be responsible for securing vaccine supplies.

I remember staring in disbelief.

“Has anyone asked whether we could actually do that?” I asked.

The answer was simple.

“It is in the Provincial Health Plan.”

The expectation existed on paper. The practical reality had not been considered.

On a normal day, approximately 30% of officers were unavailable due to vacation, training, injuries, routine illness, or psychological health leave. If pandemic projections were accurate, we could lose nearly half our operational workforce.

Yet at the same time, we were expected to maintain emergency response, answer 911 calls, protect critical infrastructure, and now provide security for vaccine distribution.

The plan looked excellent on paper.

The problem was that no one had validated whether it was achievable.

No Plan Survives First Contact

Military leaders have long understood a simple truth:

No plan survives first contact.

The problem wasn’t the quality of the health authority’s planning. Their plan was detailed and comprehensive.

The problem was that key partners had not been involved in developing it.

Emergency management and business continuity planning cannot occur in a vacuum. Every organization involved in a crisis has competing priorities, resource limitations, and operational realities.

You cannot assume what another agency is capable of delivering.

You cannot dictate expectations without understanding consequences.

And you certainly cannot build resilience without collaboration.

The Domino Effect of Continuity Planning

The realization forced our police service into an intense period of continuity planning.

We started by identifying our most critical function:

Answering emergency calls and responding to 911 incidents.

Everything else became secondary.

We developed plans to redeploy officers from specialty units into frontline policing if staffing levels dropped significantly. Investigators, specialists, and support personnel could be reassigned to core operational duties.

But every reassignment created another gap.

Each move solved one problem while creating another.

Continuity planning became a giant game of organizational dominoes.

As leaders, we are often forced to make difficult trade-offs. Resources are finite. During a crisis, there are no perfect solutions — only the best available options.

After several days of planning, we developed what we believed was a workable strategy. Officers would be deployed individually in patrol vehicles to reduce unnecessary exposure. Critical services would be prioritized. Contingencies were in place.

I went home believing we had done everything possible.

I was wrong.

The Weak Link We Almost Missed

Late that evening, while reflecting on the day’s work, a troubling thought occurred to me.

We had made the same mistake as the health authority.

We had overlooked a critical partner.

The Communications Centre.

Our dispatchers answer emergency calls, coordinate responses, track officer safety, and serve as the lifeline between the public and frontline responders.

Without them, police officers become disconnected assets.

They cannot be deployed effectively.

They cannot receive calls.

They cannot be coordinated.

They cannot be protected.

Yet dispatchers worked in close quarters for twelve-hour shifts inside a highly technical environment where social distancing was difficult.

Their risk of illness and workplace transmission was significant.

If dispatch failed, our entire operational plan would fail.

Every Organization Has Essential Functions Hidden in Plain Sight

Years ago, it may have been possible to place a police officer behind a radio and answer calls during an emergency.

Not anymore.

Modern communications centres are highly specialized environments requiring extensive technical training and experience.

We could not simply replace dispatchers with available officers.

Even if we could, we didn’t have enough personnel to do so.

Our solution was to work collaboratively with our employee association and develop agreements allowing retired communications operators to return on contract if staffing shortages became severe.

It was not a perfect solution.

But it was practical.

And more importantly, it acknowledged reality.

The Leadership Lesson

The greatest risk in crisis planning is not what you know.

It is what you fail to consider.

Every organization is a system of interconnected people, departments, contractors, suppliers, and partners.

The most sophisticated emergency plan in the world can fail because one critical function was overlooked.

Leaders must cast the planning net wide.

Include frontline staff.

Include partners.

Include unions.

Include contractors.

Include support services.

Ask difficult questions.

Challenge assumptions.

Pressure-test expectations.

Most importantly, remember that every role matters.

The Poster I Never Forgot

When I was a child, I saw a poster depicting the eyes, nose, and mouth arguing about which was most important.

The eyes claimed superiority because they could see the beauty of the world.

The nose argued it could smell the wonders of nature.

The mouth insisted it could taste life’s pleasures.

Then the butt chimed in.

“I think I’m the most important.”

The others laughed.

So the butt stopped working.

Before long, the eyes watered too much to see, the nose could not smell, and the mouth lost its appetite.

The lesson was simple.

The most important part of a system is often the one you overlook.

Organizations are no different.

Every employee, every department, and every partner is a critical component of success.

Ignore one, and eventually the entire system suffers.

Final Thought

Organizations do not rise to the level of their expectations during a crisis.

They fall to the level of their preparation.

True preparedness requires more than plans, policies, and procedures.

It requires collaboration, realism, and a willingness to recognize that resilience is built collectively.

Because when the next crisis arrives — and it will — the strength of your response will depend not on what is written in the plan, but on whether everyone needed to execute it was invited to help build it.