Preparedness Labs · Ottawa, Canada
We make businesses hard to kill.
Non-apocalyptic, evidence-based strategies to thrive in chaos.
If your operations stopped tomorrow, would you know exactly what to do? We build practical resilience for founder-led businesses. Intelligence every 72 hours. A system that fits your company, not a mold.
19 min · If you were gone for 72 hours, could your business still operate?
The Problem
Most businesses run the same loop.
Something happens. Scramble. React. Recover. Forget. Repeat.
The problem is not that disruption happens. It is that most businesses find their biggest weakness in the middle of the crisis. Ask any owner four questions:
Could you still make payroll?
If revenue paused for two weeks, what happens to the people who depend on you?
Would your customers stay?
If you could not deliver for days, who waits and who walks to a competitor?
Could your team respond?
Would the people around you know what to prioritize, and who decides what?
Would you know what to do?
Not eventually. In the first 72 hours. And if you were not there, would the business know without you?
If any answer makes you pause, you are not behind. You are at the exact point where preparation stops being improvisation and starts being a system.
The Method
Calm beats scramble.
Five moves, practiced before you need them.
See
Know what is changing in the risk world before it reaches your door. Most owners are surprised by events. Prepared ones saw the signal weeks earlier.
Assess
Decide what actually matters. You do not protect everything equally. You find the few dependencies that would hurt most if they disappeared.
Prepare
Fix the highest-return weaknesses first. Small, affordable changes beat a 200-page plan nobody reads.
Respond
When something goes wrong, you know what matters, your people know what to do, and leadership can decide under pressure.
Adapt
Your business changes. Your suppliers, systems, people, and customers change. The system stays alive because it is part of how you operate.
The Operational Resilience System
Eleven working parts. One living system.
Built around your actual business. Not an imaginary corporation with 10,000 employees.
Everyone else sells compliance documents and frameworks designed for enterprises. We build mitigation into the business you already run, without redesigning it to fit a mold.
Operations map
How your business actually works, made visible. Activities, dependencies, weak points.
Risk register
The risks that deserve attention now, separated from everything competing for it.
90-day roadmap
Analysis turned into action. Priorities sequenced so the first month is already moving.
Three of the eleven working parts. The full system also covers leadership, assets, threats, treatments, continuity, response, decisions, and quarterly reviews, with 12 months of support while it becomes habit.
The Free Brief
The world, translated for your business. Every 72 hours.
What happened. What it means for you. What to do about it.
The short version
A sharp summary you can read in two minutes. What happened and why you should care.
What actually happened
Each event broken down to its root cause. Not headlines. Causes.
What to do about it
Practical steps sized for small and mid-sized businesses. Things you can action this week.
What is coming next
Emerging risk signals to watch, before they show up in the news.
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The Offers
Start where you are.
See it. Build it. Or build it with me.
Executive Early Warning System
- Executive intelligence every 72 hours
- What developments mean for your business, and what to do now
- Weekly Leaders' Playbooks
- Monthly strategic briefing
- Monthly two-hour live group Q&A
ORS Self-Paced
- The full ORS methodology, at your own pace
- Operational map, asset inventory, risk register
- Treatment strategies and 90-day roadmap
- Quarterly review process
- Pre-sale price $597 CAD through August 31, 2026. It becomes $997 CAD on September 1, 2026.
Private Executive Engagement
- We build your full system together
- All eleven working parts, around your business
- Six-month disruption exercise included
- 12 months of Early Warning System included
- 12 months of ongoing support
Jeff Donaldson, PhD · Founder
The Founder
Written by someone who has done the work.
He started Preparedness Labs so founder-led businesses could get the same practical resilience big companies get.
Jeff Donaldson spent 28 years as a Canadian Army officer and now teaches disaster and emergency management at Royal Roads University. He has spent those 28 years helping organizations prepare for the days that do not go to plan, without the enterprise price tag or the 200-page binder.
Mastering Risk
New thinking, daily.
About twenty minutes a day on risk, resilience, and running a business that lasts.
Your Next Step
Don't wait for disruption to show you the gaps.
Get the next brief. Read it in minutes. Know what everyone else learns the hard way.