Skip to content
Growing up on a dairy farm taught me more about business continuity than any business book ever could. Most people don't realize how unforgiving a dairy farm can be. Dairy cows have to be milked twice a day at the same time every day. I can remember on one or more occasions my dad throwing up as he milked. It didn’t matter that he was sick. It also didn’t matter if it was Christmas Day. There are no holidays when it comes to farming. They need to be milked every day, no exception.
As a kid, that was simply life. The cows came first.
One year, when I was about four years old, my parents decided to take a vacation to Florida. My dad believed he had left the farm in good hands. He trusted someone else to care for the herd while he was gone. Unfortunately, he was wrong and half the herd died.
Years of investment, breeding, and future production all gone. Years of future production.
My father never left the farm again when he had dairy cows.
The Herd Is Your Business
When I walk into manufacturing companies today, I often think about that story.
Every manufacturer has a herd. It may not have four legs, but it's the collection of assets that keep the business alive. Production equipment, ERP systems, inventory systems, operational technology, supply chain systems, people, processes, data and information flow.
Those assets create revenue, and when they stop functioning, the business suffers.
What CFOs Understand Better Than Anyone
Plant managers worry about uptime. Operations teams worry about production. IT teams worry about technology. CFOs worry about risk or at least they should.
The best CFOs I've worked with understand something important: Business continuity isn't an IT expense. It's risk management.
Too often, continuity planning gets pushed into the technology bucket. Then the conversation becomes:
"Can we reduce the spend?"
"Can we delay the upgrade?"
"Can we get one more year out of it?"
That's not the right question.
The right question is:
"What happens if this fails?"
"What does that failure cost us?"
The Most Expensive Decision Is Often the One You Don't Make
I see this play out all the time. The Plant Manager knows that the system is aging. The IT team knows that backups haven't been tested. The MSP has identified vulnerabilities.
Everyone understands the risk, but the investment gets delayed. Not because anyone is irresponsible, but because there are always competing priorities.
Then one day something breaks, and suddenly the investment that seemed expensive becomes very affordable compared to the cost of the outage.
The Best CFOs and Plant Managers Are Aligned
The healthiest manufacturing organizations I've worked with have a strong partnership between the CFO and Plant Manager. They don't see each other as obstacles. They see each other as teammates.
The Plant Manager understands operational risk. The CFO understands financial risk. Together, they evaluate where the organization is exposed and decide what deserves attention.
Not every recommendation gets approved, but the decisions are intentional. Not reactive.
Business Continuity Is About More Than Technology
When people hear the phrase "business continuity," they often think of servers, backups, and cybersecurity.
Those things matter, but business continuity is bigger than that. It's about protecting the systems, processes, people, and information that keep revenue flowing. It's about ensuring that one bad day doesn't become a company-changing event. It's about making sure the business can continue operating when something unexpected happens, because something unexpected always happens.
The Real Job of Leadership
My father couldn't control the weather, the fires, or disease. He couldn't control every risk that existed on the farm, but he could control how prepared he was. That's the real lesson.
Business continuity isn't about eliminating risk. It's about reducing exposure. It's about understanding what matters most and protecting it. It's about making decisions before you're forced to make them.
The best CFOs understand this. They know continuity planning isn't a cost center. It's insurance for the future of the business, and just like my father learned on that dairy farm years ago, the cost of preparation is almost always lower than the cost of recovery.
The question isn't whether something will eventually go wrong. The question is whether you'll be ready when it does.
I hope you appreciate the throwback picture of myself at 9 years old showing a cow at the county fair!