Creating Dual Playbooks: Bridging Technical Recovery and Business Continuity

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a seven-part “Cross-Departmental Resilience Framework” series by Scott Balentine of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. The series offers a practical roadmap for embedding resilience across governance, operations, and culture.

Previous articles in this series:

• https://drj.com/journal_main/resilience-council-governance-framework/
• https://drj.com/journal_main/defining-important-business-services-resilience/

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When disruption strikes, organizations often prioritize restoring systems and infrastructure, assuming technical recovery will automatically enable business continuity. However, this assumption has repeatedly been proven false. Technical teams may bring servers back online, but if communications with regulators, customers, or employees are delayed, the consequences can be severe. Missed regulatory reporting deadlines can trigger fines, while failure to update customers can erode trust. Similarly, if alternate business processes such as manual order fulfillment are not activated, even restored systems may not prevent operational collapse.

To address this gap, organizations must adopt dual playbooks:

• Technical Playbooks: Focused on detection, containment, recovery, and restoration of IT, operational technology (OT), and facilities.
• Business Playbooks: Focused on communications, compliance, HR, supply chain continuity, and executive decision-making.

By ensuring these playbooks operate in parallel rather than isolation, organizations synchronize recovery, minimize downtime, and maintain customer and regulator trust.

Why Dual Playbooks Matter

Limitations of Single-Track Response

Traditional continuity approaches often rely heavily on IT disaster recovery or incident response plans. While necessary, these documents are insufficient for holistic resilience. For example, during a cyberattack, IT may focus on isolating systems and rebuilding infrastructure. Yet if customer communications are delayed or regulatory disclosures are overlooked, the damage may extend far beyond technical downtime. Stakeholders do not judge resilience by server recovery times alone—they expect timely updates, continued access to services, and regulatory compliance.

Alignment with Global Frameworks

Dual playbooks directly operationalize established resilience frameworks:

• ISO 22301 requires organizations to document continuity procedures that address both technical recovery and the delivery of products and services.
• NIST SP 800-34 emphasizes integrating contingency planning across business units, not just IT.
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 highlights “respond” and “recover” functions, which include containment, restoration, communication, and coordination.

By separating—but coordinating—technical and business tracks, dual playbooks provide the governance structure these frameworks envision.

Case Studies

Colonial Pipeline: Failure to Bridge IT and Business

In May 2021, Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware attack affecting its business IT systems. While IT teams worked on containment, leaders opted to halt fuel delivery across the U.S. East Coast due to uncertainty about the attack’s impact on OT systems. The decision led to significant fuel shortages, panic buying, and economic ripple effects (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The incident underscored the absence of predefined criteria linking IT incidents to business decisions. A dual playbook could have provided decision-making triggers and communication protocols, reducing both uncertainty and impact.

Norsk Hydro: Transparent Dual Response

In contrast, Norsk Hydro’s 2019 ransomware attack highlighted the benefits of dual playbooks. IT teams focused on containment and rebuilding digital systems, while business leaders activated manual production processes and launched transparent stakeholder communications. Hydro refused to pay ransom, coordinated responses across departments, and maintained public trust despite significant disruption. This approach demonstrated the effectiveness of running technical and business tracks in parallel.

Healthcare: Clinical Continuity During IT Outages

Hospitals provide daily examples of the need for dual playbooks. During electronic health record (EHR) outages, IT teams may work on restoring access, but clinical operations cannot wait. Physicians, nurses, and pharmacists must switch to downtime procedures such as paper charting, manual medication reconciliation, and emergency communication protocols. Organizations with dual playbooks bridge technical and clinical processes, avoiding disruptions to patient care and ensuring safety.

Structure of Dual Playbooks

The structure of dual playbooks begins with the technical track, which focuses on the containment and restoration of systems and infrastructure. Effective technical playbooks typically outline clear detection and containment procedures, such as isolating compromised systems, shutting down infected networks, or switching operations to backup environments. Once containment is achieved, recovery procedures guide teams through restoring critical applications, databases, identity services, and operational technology controls. These playbooks also define escalation criteria that specify when disaster recovery should be formally activated or when workloads need to be transferred to alternate sites. Importantly, technical playbooks include defined handoff points, ensuring technical updates are consistently shared with business leaders so they can make informed, non-technical decisions.

In parallel, business playbooks provide a framework for sustaining organizational operations and meeting external obligations during a crisis. They begin with customer communication strategies, including pre-approved messaging, escalation triggers, and monitoring of social media to manage public perception. Business playbooks also cover regulatory reporting requirements, ensuring compliance with rules such as the General Data Protection Regulation’s 72-hour disclosure mandate. Human resources responsibilities are addressed as well, encompassing workforce safety, surge staffing, payroll continuity, and employee counseling resources. Supply chain and operational continuity are supported through alternate vendor activation, manual workarounds, and facility adjustments. At the leadership level, executive decision-making protocols guide crisis governance, board reporting, and reputational management.

Together, these dual playbooks ensure technical fixes and business obligations advance in parallel rather than sequentially. By aligning technical recovery with business continuity, organizations minimize downtime, preserve trust, and maintain compliance, demonstrating a holistic approach to resilience.

Actionable Steps for Developing Dual Playbooks

Identify Critical Scenarios

The first step in developing dual playbooks is to identify the critical scenarios where both technical and business tracks are essential. These scenarios often include ransomware attacks, natural disasters, vendor failures, or other high-impact events which simultaneously disrupt systems and require coordinated business responses. By focusing on a manageable set of top risks, organizations ensure their playbooks are both relevant and practical.

Role-Specific Playbooks

Once scenarios are identified, the next step is to draft role-specific playbooks. These documents should be concise, ideally no longer than one to two pages, to ensure they can be used quickly and effectively in the high-pressure environment of a crisis. Creating role-specific versions—for example, tailored for executives, IT leads, or communications managers—help eliminate confusion by providing each stakeholder with clear, actionable guidance aligned with their responsibilities.

Defining Handoffs

Defining handoffs is also critical to success. Dual playbooks must explicitly describe when and how information flows between technical and business teams. For instance, when system containment is achieved, IT should immediately notify communications teams so they can release accurate updates to customers and regulators. These predefined handoff points prevent delays and misalignment, ensuring recovery and communication advance in parallel.

Pre-Approved Communications

In addition, communications should be pre-approved to avoid last-minute bottlenecks. Templates for internal updates, customer messaging, and regulatory disclosures should be developed and reviewed ahead of time. This pre-approval ensures during a crisis, teams can act quickly without being slowed by legal reviews or executive sign-offs when time is most critical.

Testing Dual Playbooks

To validate effectiveness, organizations must test their dual playbooks in joint exercises. These rehearsals should simulate real scenarios where both technical and business playbooks are activated simultaneously. During exercises, leaders can measure coordination speed, the clarity of decision-making, and the ability of teams to work together under pressure. Such testing not only identifies gaps but also builds confidence across departments.

Living Playbooks

Finally, playbooks must remain living documents. They should be reviewed after every major incident or at least on an annual basis to incorporate lessons learned, adapt to changing risks, and address evolving regulatory obligations. By maintaining this regular review cycle, organizations ensure their dual playbooks remain relevant, actionable, and aligned with both operational realities and compliance requirements.

Challenges and Mitigations

One of the most common challenges organizations face when developing dual playbooks is over-engineering. In an effort to anticipate every possible scenario, some teams create documents that are excessively detailed and ultimately unwieldy in practice. During a crisis, staff do not have the time or capacity to navigate through dozens of pages of instructions. The mitigation lies in focusing on high-level actions, defining clear roles, and identifying essential handoffs between teams. By simplifying the structure, organizations ensure playbooks remain usable under pressure and provide the clarity needed in fast-moving situations.

Another challenge arises from departmental silos, particularly when technical teams resist involving business leaders in resilience planning. IT groups may assume that system recovery alone is sufficient, while business functions may underestimate the importance of technical contingencies. This disconnect creates gaps that undermine coordinated response. A strong governance mechanism, such as a resilience council, can address this issue by enforcing cross-functional ownership and ensuring both business and technical perspectives are represented in the development and testing of playbooks.

Regulatory complexity also creates difficulties, especially in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance. Different jurisdictions and regulators impose varied disclosure requirements, such as strict timelines for incident reporting. Without explicit integration of these obligations, organizations risk non-compliance even if technical recovery is successful. The most effective mitigation is to embed compliance teams directly into the business playbooks, ensuring regulatory reporting requirements are captured and appropriate steps are taken within mandated timeframes.

Finally, cultural resistance can hinder adoption of dual playbooks. Some staff may perceive them as unnecessary duplication or additional bureaucracy, particularly if they are unfamiliar with the consequences of delayed communication. Overcoming this resistance requires education and storytelling—highlighting real-world case studies where organizations suffered reputational and financial damage because communication lagged behind technical recovery. By illustrating the tangible risks of neglecting the business track, leaders can build buy-in and demonstrate the value of integrating both playbooks into organizational practice.

Benefits of Dual Playbooks

Organizations that adopt dual playbooks benefit in multiple ways:

• Speed: Parallel execution reduces downtime and accelerates recovery
• Clarity: Defined roles and handoffs prevent duplication and omissions
• Trust: Transparent, timely communication preserves stakeholder confidence
• Compliance: Pre-planned regulatory reporting reduces legal and financial risks
• Resilience Culture: Cross-functional ownership embeds resilience into the organizational fabric

Conclusion

Dual playbooks are the operational glue that connects technical recovery to business continuity. Without them, organizations risk restoring infrastructure while losing customer trust, or meeting compliance obligations while leaving operations disrupted. Case studies from Colonial Pipeline, Norsk Hydro, and healthcare providers illustrate both the dangers of fragmented response and the advantages of integrated planning.

By developing, testing, and updating technical and business playbooks, organizations operationalize the principles of ISO 22301, NIST SP 800-34, and NIST CSF 2.0. More importantly, they protect not only infrastructure but also the services, relationships, and trust that define organizational resilience.

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The fourth article in this seven-part series, “Running Cross-Functional Exercises: Building Organizational Muscle Memory,” focuses on how organizations can move beyond isolated drills to conduct enterprise-wide resilience exercises that mirror real-world disruptions. It demonstrates how cross-functional rehearsals—rooted in frameworks like ISO 22301 and NIST SP 800-34—strengthen coordination, communication, and decision-making across departments. Through case studies from Cleveland Clinic, A.P. Møller–Maersk, and Kaiser Permanente, the article illustrates how multidisciplinary exercises uncover gaps, foster trust, and embed preparedness into organizational culture. Readers will gain practical steps for designing, executing, and evaluating exercises that transform planning into practiced performance.