The leadership standard for recovery and communication
Most leaders say downtime matters.
But the truth shows up when work stops, and the phones start ringing. In that moment, optimism doesn’t help. What helps is knowing—without guessing—what’s impacted, who’s leading, what happens next, and where updates live so everyone is working from the same truth.
At MSG, we define downtime in plain business terms:
Downtime is any period when a critical system can’t perform its job—meaning your team can’t work, or your clients can’t reach you.
That definition forces the right question—not “Is a server up?” but “Is the business moving?”
It also forces an honest conversation most organizations avoid: there’s no universal downtime tolerance. It varies by company, industry, client expectations, and regulatory reality. The point isn’t to pretend everyone needs the same standard. The point is to know yours—and prove you can meet it.
Because “we’ll know it when we see it” sounds reasonable… until you actually feel it.
A simple thought experiment we use with leaders: imagine a backhoe cuts your fiber line. Or a storm knocks out power. Or a security event that forces systems offline. Not to be dramatic—just to be honest. The risk isn’t the disruption itself. It’s discovering mid-incident that leadership doesn’t agree on what’s “serious,” teams aren’t aligned on ownership, and communication turns into improvisation.
The leadership move: require proof, not confidence
We’re a SOC 2 Type 2 audited MSP/MSSP, and our posture is simple: evidence over assumptions.
Confidence is not a plan. A plan has owners. A plan has proof. A plan produces calm execution—even when the incident itself is unpredictable.
If you want a fast, practical way to establish that baseline inside your organization, this is it:
Leadership memo: copy/paste to your Ops/IT lead
Subject: Downtime readiness — baseline answers needed (with evidence)
Team—this isn’t about perfection. It’s about avoiding chaos when something breaks.
When an incident hits, leadership needs two things immediately:
- A clear view of business impact and recovery expectations, and
- A communication plan that establishes ownership and a single source of truth.
Please answer the questions below within one business day using whatever evidence exists today (notes, last restore results, vendor reports, screenshots, documentation links).
If evidence doesn’t exist yet, say that plainly—and include (1) an owner and (2) the date it will exist. That’s how we get an honest baseline.
1. What counts as downtime for us?
Define, in business terms, what stops operations or client response enough that it becomes a business incident.
Deliverable: 3–5 plain-language examples + who declares an incident.
2. When was the last proven restore?
What did we restore, when, how long did it take, and what failed or surprised us?
Deliverable: date/time, system(s), method, duration, result, proof (link/screenshot).
3. What are our top 5 business-critical systems?
For each system: business owner, what breaks if it’s down, dependencies, who must be notified, and where documentation lives.
Deliverable: one list leadership can use.
4. What’s our realistic recovery expectation for each system?
Not goals—what we’ve proven or can justify.
Deliverable: recovery expectation + what it’s based on (test/docs) + what’s assumed vs verified.
5. What’s the plan for the big scenarios?
Internet disruption, server failure, cloud outage, ransomware/security incident. High-level is fine. The question is: is it defined and owned?
Deliverable: short outline + owner for each scenario.
6. Who leads the incident?
Primary and backup. Who coordinates technical work? Who owns business communication?
Deliverable: named roles + contact method + after-hours escalation path.
7. How will we communicate during an incident?
Not the wording of the message—the plan.
Deliverable:
- who owns updates (primary + backup)
- who receives updates (leadership, users, clients if applicable)
- what channels are used (and when)
- where updates are logged/centralized so we have one source of truth
8. When did we last validate our posture with an outside lens?
Cyber/network assessment, backup integrity validation, tabletop exercise, or third-party review.
Deliverable: date, scope, key findings, remediation status. If none: owner + fastest responsible plan this quarter.
Rule of thumb: If we can’t point to a recent restore test and a clearly owned communication plan, we don’t know our downtime risk—we’re operating on assumptions.
What to do with the answers
Once that memo comes back, you’ll have two things leadership can use:
- A baseline you can lead from.
What the business considers downtime, what systems matter most, what recovery looks like in reality, and who owns the response.
- A gap list that shows where support would matter most.
If parts of the memo come back incomplete or unsupported, that’s a signal—not a surprise. It shows where recovery capability, resilience planning, or operational coverage needs to be strengthened, so incidents don’t turn into improvisation.
And if the communication portion comes back as “we’ll figure it out in the moment,” that’s a clear signal too: not because anyone’s incompetent, but because improvisation is expensive during incidents. It pulls technical teams away from recovery, and it burns trust faster than most leaders expect.
A downtime story that’s ordinary—and that’s why it matters
Some of the most instructive downtime events aren’t sophisticated.
A client called because things weren’t running the way they should. We got an alert, confirmed the server was unreachable, and traced it quickly: the server had been unplugged—because the “server room” doubled as a supply room, and routine cleaning moved equipment.
We had the issue fixed within the hour. But the bigger point is why this story matters: most downtime isn’t cinematic. It’s operational. And operational problems don’t get solved by heroics—they get solved by discipline, clear ownership, and calm execution.
Even “trusted” vendors can become the incident
Downtime risk isn’t only internal. Sometimes disruption is upstream—a provider outage, a bad patch, a vendor update that becomes the point of failure.
That’s exactly why resilience planning can’t rely on the assumption that any one tool will “never” be the problem. The goal isn’t fear. It’s design: reduce single points of failure, validate recovery, and ensure you can respond with alignment when the unexpected shows up.
The takeaway
Downtime tolerance varies by business, but the leadership standard doesn’t:
It will happen. The difference is whether your organization responds with confusion—or with calm execution and transparent communication.
If you want these questions answered with evidence (not opinions)—and you want the gaps turned into an owned plan—talk with us about a downtime readiness assessment, including restore validation and incident communication ownership, so the next disruption is handled with execution instead of improvisation.