A business continuity plan for a small business, on one page

What a plan actually needs

Continuity templates are written for companies with a risk department. A 5-to-50 person firm needs something an owner will keep current, which means one page. The core of that page is not a list of disasters. It is a list of people.

For each seat: what only this person does, what others can also do, and who is the named backup. That table answers the insurer, the bank, the buyer, and the 2 a.m. worry in one shot.

The seat-by-seat table

Columns: Seat. Processes only they perform. Systems only they can log into. Vendors and clients who only know them. Named backup. Last verified.

Rows: every seat, including the owner. The owner's row is usually the worst one.

Filling it in without a workshop

You do not need interviews. Your Microsoft 365 tenant already records who owns which groups, mailboxes, sites, and apps, and who organizes which recurring meetings. Pull that first, then ask each person to correct their row. Corrections take minutes; inventing the table from memory takes weeks and is wrong.

Keeping it true

Put a date in the last column and re-run the tenant pull every quarter. If a row has not changed but the directory has, the row is stale. The plan is a living document only if something refreshes it; otherwise it is a binder.