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Thierry Gilgen

Library · reading expedition

When the supplier fails

12 minutes

Starting question

What can your organisation decide and do before the supplier recovers?

An exit plan is useful only if people can act during an interruption. These passages move from dependency to an exercise and a measurable response.

Download guided excerpt packet (PDF)

  1. Volume 22 · Edition 1

    > **What would happen if we had to stop using it?**

    A service can work well and still leave the organisation unable to leave or respond.

    Field Note 22 · The Exit Test · edition 1

    Read full articleCited edition

  2. Volume 43 · Edition 1

    Consider a small exercise before the next supplier review. A service your organisation depends on becomes unavailable on a Tuesday morning. The supplier has acknowledged the incident but cannot give a recovery time. Nothing else about the scenario is known. Give the people who run the service ten minutes to show what they can actually do.

    The exercise reveals the real authority and information available before a supplier offers certainty.

    Field Note 43 · The first ten minutes of a supplier outage · edition 1

    Read full articleCited edition

  3. Volume 46 · Edition 1

    A response-time figure becomes useful to leaders when it describes a decision the organisation can make and an outcome it can verify. The clock needs a clear start, a bounded task and an observable finish. Otherwise, a fast acknowledgement can stand in for a recovery that has not happened.

    Measure the time to a verified action, not merely the speed of an acknowledgement.

    Field Note 46 · Response time as a governance metric · edition 1

    Read full articleCited edition

Counterargument

Ten minutes is an exercise window, not a universal recovery objective. Different services have different tolerances; a rehearsed decision matters more than a heroic target.

Exercise

Run a ten-minute tabletop for one essential supplier. Record the first decision, who can authorize it, the evidence available, the fallback, and the observable end of recovery. Repeat with a deputy.

Edition manifest

  1. Volume 22 · Edition 1 · the-exit-test
    SHA-256 68d9dff344c9cc6f8dbde8fc6b1d03d1c4abefc554094ee7f6136fd3c1207f55
  2. Volume 43 · Edition 1 · the-first-ten-minutes-of-a-supplier-outage
    SHA-256 5c302863608d97f2e5040bc13e5b6ccfdf73640b5024c1dcb46c7e778a685623
  3. Volume 46 · Edition 1 · response-time-as-a-governance-metric
    SHA-256 7c0af30d184fe7aba56a8444ecdc22a95ae14fa95f6232e476307286119036fb
Selected context packet / decision dossier

Choose up to five volumes. The packet contains selected extracts, edition identities, recorded sources and objections; follow links for complete articles. Preview exactly what you take away.

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