Six BC Blind Spots: Common Gaps That Can Derail Your Recovery Efforts

Many business continuity teams fall into the trap of spending time on tasks that have more to do with cosmetics than substance. In today’s post, we look at six common BC blind spots: areas that are frequently overlooked but which can truly affect recovery and are well worth your attention.

Related: BIA Blunders: 6 Common Mistakes
Organizations Make When Conducting BIAs

When BC Staff Focus on Style Over Substance

If there’s one thing BC practitioners have in common it’s that they have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Another thing that unites them is most work in an environment where skepticism and lack of knowledge about what they are doing are widespread.

Given this backdrop, it’s not surprising that many practitioners have an outsized concern with keeping up appearances. Examples of activities that eat up time while contributing little to resilience include obsessing over the appearance of recovery plans and slideshows and focusing on volume metrics such as the number of business impact analyses (BIAs) done or recovery plans written. 

Unfortunately, these activities often come at the expense of work that could actually help the organization recover. 

Here are six unglamorous but important activities which are often neglected by BC teams, allowing readiness gaps to persist and increasing the risk of significant outages. 

1. Monitor and Counter Misinformation

What you don’t know CAN hurt you, especially in the age of AI and social media. Serious outages always spawn waves of chatter, speculation, and comment, internal and external. This material can run the gamut in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, motivation, and media. It can be any or all of the following: well-meaning, accurate, improperly disclosed, innocently exaggerated, accidentally garbled, completely made up, and explicitly malicious. 

It’s natural for people to talk about dramatic events at their organizations. But such events can also provide openings for those who see an opportunity to use them to spread confusion and cause harm. The problem with misinformation (and information that is accurate but improperly disclosed) is that it can cause serious negative impacts to the organization. Misinformation (and improper disclosures) during an event can cause reputational damage, breed confusion, motivate employees to commit undesirable actions, impair competitiveness, and violate others’ privacy, potentially exposing the organization to liability. 

For these reasons, BC staff need to ensure that the company’s plans assign people to monitor social media, keep an ear to the ground to learn what employees are saying among themselves, and counter misinformation with clear, accurate, and vetted updates. The team should also send out frequent reminders to staff about the company’s policies on communicating with the media and sharing information. This is a challenging role, and the people entrusted must receive adequate training and preparation ahead of time.

2. Plan for AI-Driven Fakes

The rise of generative AI has made it easier than ever to create convincing falsehoods. A fabricated video of a senior executive or a fake internal memo can circulate in minutes, sparking confusion or reputational harm.

Today’s threat environment includes sophisticated “deepfakes” that mimic tone, style, and personal details scraped from social media. What once were obvious scams—poorly worded phishing emails or cartoonish videos—can now look and sound authentic.

BC and crisis teams should plan for this reality. Include procedures for validating communications and verifying leadership messages during a crisis. Train employees to question suspicious content and focus on logical consistency rather than surface polish. In an age when AI can fake almost anything, discernment becomes a continuity skill.

3. Validate Your Real Capabilities

When organizations assess critical processes and workarounds, they often overestimate what they can truly do without their usual systems. People say, “We can track it manually” or “We can email customers the status.” But have they tested that? Do they have the necessary data outside the system that’s down?

Similarly, teams frequently assume everyone knows how to perform certain tasks when, in reality, only one or two people do them regularly. In a crisis, those gaps can quickly become bottlenecks.

The fix is straightforward but requires discipline: challenge assumptions, test manual workarounds, and confirm that critical knowledge isn’t locked in a single person’s head or system. Knowing your real capabilities—rather than your theoretical ones—builds true resilience.

4. Simplify Recovery Plans

In their desire to be thorough, some BC teams make their plans so complex that they become unwieldy. Lengthy procedures, unnecessary background, or over-documentation of obvious steps all slow down the response.

The goal of a recovery plan isn’t to impress; it’s to guide people in real time. Keep instructions simple, specific, and actionable. Document what’s essential, not everything imaginable. If people already know how to perform a standard task, there’s no need to spell it out.

A concise plan that people can quickly navigate under stress will always outperform a lengthy one that no one uses.

5. Define Non-IT Workarounds

Too many programs assume IT will solve everything. While technology is central to continuity, recovery often requires manual or procedural workarounds to bridge the gap until systems are restored.

If a key application is unavailable for an extended period, what will staff do in the meantime? How will they track orders, communicate with customers, or process transactions? 

BC planning should explicitly define those interim activities. Identify what can be done manually, what tools or data are needed, and who can make decisions. Having those workarounds ready keeps the business functioning even when IT isn’t.

6. Avoid Mistaking Documentation for Capability

Believing that possessing documentation is the same thing as being able to recover might be the biggest blind spot of all. Many organizations treat plan creation as the finish line: “We have the plan, so we’re covered.” But simply having a plan is closer to the beginning of the process than the end. Will the plan really work when you need it? The only way to find out is to put it to the test.

Once a plan exists, the real work of business continuity begins: exercising it, identifying weaknesses, and refining the approach based on what you learn. Each test should drive improvements in coordination, communication, and decision-making. Over time, this cycle of practice and improvement transforms static documentation into true organizational capability.

Effective continuity management is not a one-time project but a continuous process of training, rehearsal, and validation. Exercising plans uncovers gaps in assumptions, dependencies, and workarounds—so they can be corrected before an actual disruption exposes them for you.

Building Real Resilience

Many organizations focus their BC efforts on producing documents, reports, and metrics that look good on paper but don’t necessarily translate to real resilience. Meanwhile, many activities that are less flashy but would contribute more to recovery often go undone. 

By keeping attention on the commonly neglected areas discussed above, BC teams can move their programs from theoretical readiness to practical capability. The result is a continuity framework that performs effectively under real-world conditions.

If you’re unsure whether your BC program is addressing these blind spots—or if you’d like guidance on strengthening your organization’s recovery capabilities—contact MHA Consulting. Our consultants can help you focus your time and resources where they’ll deliver the greatest resilience value.

Further Reading

• BIA Blunders: 6 Common Mistakes Organizations Make When Conducting BIAs
• Dropping the Ball: 6 Common Crisis Response Mistakes
• My Favorite Mistake: 6 Common Business Continuity Misconceptions
• The 6 Tasks Every Emergency Plan Should Address
• Resilience Roadblocks: Top 6 Challenges Companies Encounter in Doing BIAs