Finland has a preparedness model that people travel here to marvel at: comprehensive security. Its core idea is that society’s vital functions are secured through cooperation between authorities, business, NGOs and citizens. Not the authorities handling it while everyone else watches — but everyone having a role.

For me this model is no festive-speech abstraction. I see it from both sides: in my day job around quality and safety in industry, and in my free time in the voluntary rescue service, where volunteers trained by NGOs supplement the authorities’ resources when their own hands aren’t enough.

Comprehensive security is the most Finnish thing I know: everyone contributes, few even notice.

What a company can take from the model

The first lesson is role clarity. In comprehensive security, every actor knows what it is responsible for and whom it leans on. Ask the same of your company: who owns continuity when a key system goes down or a key person falls ill? If the answer is “someone will surely handle it”, the roles haven’t been assigned.

The second lesson is networking before the crisis. Authorities and NGOs exercise together so that the first shared task is not the first shared encounter. The same applies to a company: know your critical partners, your neighbouring businesses and local actors before you need them. A business card exchanged in mid-crisis is too late.

The third lesson is the uncomfortable one: preparedness is practice, not a document. A plan that has never been tested is a hypothesis — and hypotheses are supposed to be tested before anything valuable is staked on them.

A small company is part of the big picture

Many SMEs think they are too small to be part of security of supply. Few are. If you deliver parts, services or expertise to even one more critical actor, you are already in the chain — and in a chain, your preparedness is also your customer’s preparedness. That is worth saying out loud in sales, too: reliability in abnormal conditions is a competitive advantage no cheaper rival can copy.

On Wednesdays I write about preparedness, quality and where they intersect. Next week I take on an abbreviation that has caused more sweat in offices than its contents deserve: NIS2.

As a service: business continuity and preparedness.