Turning Risk Into Resilience: A Preparedness Advantage
By Joyce Coffee and Robert Macnee
This post originally appeared in Continuity Insights https://continuityinsights.com/turning-risk-into-resilience-a-preparedness-advantage
National Preparedness Month is the ideal time for senior leaders to turn today’s rising hazards into tomorrow’s competitive advantage.
September marks National Preparedness Month, making it the perfect time for senior leadership to reassess how climate risks intersect with business continuity. The statistics are sobering: almost every congressional district (99.5%) in the U.S. experienced a state or federally declared disaster between 2011 and 2024. More immediately concerning, 28-40% of businesses reported financial losses from extreme weather from September 2023 to February 2024—roughly one in three businesses across all sectors.
Yet within these sobering statistics lies opportunity. While 40% of small businesses never reopen after a major disaster, and another 25% close within a year, the businesses that do survive and thrive share common characteristics: they prepared early, invested wisely in resilience measures, and turned their preparedness into a competitive advantage.
The New Reality Of Business Risk
Climate change has fundamentally altered the risk landscape. A 2025 Morgan Stanley report found that 57% of surveyed global companies experienced climate-related disruptions within the past year, with extreme heat being the most frequently cited cause, followed by extreme weather events. These disruptions led to higher operational costs, worker disruption, and lost revenue—impacts that extend far beyond the immediate disaster zone.
The challenge isn’t just the frequency of events, but their interconnected nature. Supply chains stretch across multiple risk zones, creating cascading vulnerabilities. When Hurricane Helene damaged facilities in Spruce Pine, North Carolina—home to roughly 70% of the world’s high-purity quartz—it triggered a global slowdown in semiconductor manufacturing, demonstrating how localized climate impacts can disrupt global value chains.
From Risk To Resilience: The Strategic Imperative
Forward-thinking organizations are reframing climate preparedness from a cost center to a strategic differentiator. This shift requires moving beyond traditional business continuity planning to embrace comprehensive climate resilience strategies that protect operations while creating competitive advantages.
The most effective approach integrates five core elements:
Comprehensive Risk Assessment: Begin with detailed climate risk mapping that extends beyond your primary facilities to include critical suppliers, transportation routes, and utility dependencies. Use scenario planning to understand how different climate futures might affect operations over 5-15 year horizons.
Operational Resilience Building: Invest in infrastructure hardening, backup systems, and flexible operational models. Companies implementing these measures report not only better disaster outcomes but also improved day-to-day operational efficiency and reduced insurance premiums.
Value Chain Strengthening: Work closely with suppliers to build resilience throughout your network. This includes providing technical assistance, financial support, and collaborative planning. Resilient suppliers are reliable suppliers, and reliability increasingly commands premium pricing.
Stakeholder Communication: Develop clear protocols for communicating with employees, customers, investors, and partners during disruptions. Companies with robust communication strategies maintain customer loyalty and employee retention even during extended closures.
Financial Preparedness: Ensure adequate insurance coverage, establish emergency funds, and understand available disaster assistance programs. Too many businesses discover coverage gaps only after a disaster strikes.
The Competitive Advantage Of Preparedness
Organizations that excel at climate resilience consistently outperform their peers in several key areas:
Market Position: Resilient companies can maintain service delivery when competitors cannot, capturing market share during and after disruptions.
Talent Attraction: Employees increasingly value working for organizations that prioritize their safety and demonstrate long-term thinking about risk management.
Financial Performance: While resilience investments require upfront capital, they typically generate positive returns through reduced downtime, lower insurance costs, and maintained revenue during disruptions.
Investor Confidence: As climate disclosure requirements expand, companies with demonstrated resilience strategies attract investment and command higher valuations.
Making Preparedness Practical
The key to successful climate resilience lies in making it practical and actionable. Start with a rapid assessment of your three greatest climate vulnerabilities. For most organizations, these include extreme weather at key facilities, supply chain chokepoints, and workforce disruption.
Next, identify your three most critical business functions and develop specific continuity plans for each. This targeted approach allows you to build resilience systematically while managing costs and complexity.
Finally, integrate climate considerations into existing business processes. Include climate risk in quarterly reviews, factor resilience into capital allocation decisions, and make preparedness a standing agenda item for executive leadership.
The Path Forward
As outlined in “The Resilience Advantage: A Small-Business Guide to Preparing for Floods, Heatwaves, Wildfires, and Other Climate Disasters,” the businesses thriving in our changing climate share a common approach: they prepare proactively, invest strategically, and communicate clearly. These principles apply equally to large enterprises and small businesses.
This National Preparedness Month, challenge your organization to move beyond compliance-driven preparedness to strategic resilience building. The companies that make this transition won’t just survive the next disaster—they’ll emerge stronger, more efficient, and better positioned for long-term success.
Resilience is no longer a defensive posture. It is a competitive advantage.
Joyce Coffee, LEED AP, and Robert Macnee, PhD, are co-authors of The Resilience Advantage: A Small Business Guide to Preparing for Floods, Heatwaves, Wildfires, and Other Climate Disasters (Climate Resilience Press, 2025). They lead Climate Resilience Consulting, which developed the Disaster Risk Reduction and Business Continuity Toolkit to help organizations translate risk into opportunity.