Handling a Crisis: Part 2
How to Handle a Crisis: Build a Rolling 90-Day War Plan
When pressure hits, the annual plan becomes a comfort blanket. It looks organised, but it often bears little resemblance to what is actually happening on the ground. In a crisis, long-term forecasting quickly turns into guesswork. What works far better is a rolling 90-day horizon that is updated every week and always stays three months ahead of reality.
This keeps you focused on what matters now, not what you hoped would matter six months ago.
Start with one simple question. What must happen in the next 90 days for this business to stabilise. Not to grow. Not to expand. To stabilise.
Get specific.
Cash in.
Cash out.
Costs controlled.
Revenue protected.
Write it down. Then break those 90 days into weeks and ask yourself one practical question. What must happen next week to move this forward. This turns a scary, overwhelming situation into a series of manageable steps.
The rolling part matters. Review the plan weekly. Adjust it as reality changes. You are not failing if you change the plan. You are staying honest with what is actually happening in your business.
Once the priorities are clear, identify what can be delegated. But do not rush to hand things over yet. The plan itself does not steady the business. The way you pass responsibility does.
Poor handovers create confusion, duplicated effort and dropped balls. Clear handovers create momentum. If you want people to step up in a crisis, they need clarity, not just tasks. Explain what good looks like, why it matters and how progress will be measured. Then let them run with it.
A rolling 90-day plan gives you a simple structure when everything feels messy. It keeps you close to reality, forces the right conversations and gives your team something practical to move towards.
In a crisis, clarity beats complexity every time.
Why I record these
Let me be straight with you.
I’ve had huge success in business — and I’ve also made some absolute humdinger mistakes.
My life in business hasn’t been a straight line. It’s been a roller-coaster — big wins, painful lessons, and moments where I wished someone had pulled me aside and said, “Slow down. Think this through.”
Now that I’m older, I feel a responsibility to pass things on.
Not because I’ve got it all figured out — I haven’t. But because I’ve lived it. And if sharing what I’ve learned helps another business owner avoid even one expensive mistake, then it’s worth doing.
Later in life, I became a student again — and I still am. A day doesn’t go by without me studying for at least an hour.
I regularly learn from people like Darren Hardy, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, and Jim Rohn.
Jumpstart is my way of passing those lessons on — quietly, simply, without the noise — so you can start your day thinking a little clearer than you did yesterday.