If a major commercial crisis or market shock hits our business forty-eight hours before our scheduled quarterly session, do we postpone the day or do we use our session time to tackle it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a major commercial crisis hits forty-eight hours before a quarterly session, the instinct is to postpone. My strong recommendation is to do the exact opposite. We should absolutely keep the session. A quarterly session day with an external facilitator is the single best environment to address a massive business shock. Instead of running our standard strategic agenda, we pivot the day. We spend the first hour checking in, and then we immediately move the crisis to the top of our Issues list. We then spend the rest of the day using the IDS® tool to dissect the crisis, identify root causes, and build a concrete action plan. By the end of the day, your team will have clear, immediate Rocks and short-term priorities to handle the fallout. Postponing the session means you try to solve a complex crisis through unstructured, frantic emails and ad-hoc meetings, which only increases anxiety and slows your response. Keeping the session allows your leadership team to step out of the daily noise, align on a unified strategy, and exit the room with absolute clarity on how to move forward.