Some risks do not arrive suddenly. They accumulate – quietly, gradually, and often unnoticed. Nowhere is this truer than in how organisations manage projects and change. Or more often, how they don’t. A project begins with enthusiasm, broad goals, and the comforting idea that it will run alongside business-as-usual. Yet what begins as a parallel effort quickly competes for the same people, the same systems, and the same time. And when no one truly owns the difference, continuity quietly erodes.
Projects are not neutral. They consume attention, alter workflows, create dependencies, and often dilute clarity of responsibility. Without structured oversight and boundaries, they introduce risk in ways no register ever quite captures. But the greatest risk is often not the project itself – it is the refusal to acknowledge when a project no longer makes sense.
Part of the issue is cultural. Too many organisations treat project failure as a reputational threat rather than an acceptable outcome. This leads to inertia: decisions are delayed, direction is lost, and something half-functioning continues to absorb resource and legitimacy long after its value has evaporated. Worse still is the sunk-cost fallacy – the notion that because something has already cost time, money, and pride, the best response is to commit more of each. The familiar logic: “We’ve come this far, let’s just push it over the line.” Except the line has moved, the purpose is blurred, and the cost of forcing success often exceeds the cost of a controlled stop.
This is where continuity planning earns its quiet power. A well-structured BCP process forces organisations to ask, early and often, what really matters – and whether each change, each programme, each transformation aligns with resilience. It prompts a fresh view: are we still delivering benefit? Or are we tolerating disruption under the illusion of progress?
Continuity planning also has a unique advantage – it maps functions, not just intentions. It reveals when resources are overstretched, when business-as-usual is no longer protected, and when parallel ambitions are quietly undermining core services. It brings delivery plans and operational planning into the same room, not to compare visions, but to reconcile pressures.
Critically, it gives leaders the language – and the permission – to say no. To close a project cleanly. To decommission something that no longer serves its purpose. Not as an admission of failure, but as an act of maturity. Because the real risk is not that projects fail. The real risk is that they are never allowed to.
Continuity is often misunderstood as a reactive tool. In fact, it is a discipline of clarity. It gives organisations the means to understand where things stand, where pressure sits, and what assumptions are being quietly carried by habit. In the context of projects and change, it becomes a vital corrective – not a break-glass mechanism, but a lens through which to see the cost of pressing on, and the value of sometimes stepping back.