The short answer. A Plan B is the ability to change course when a supplier, system or cost moves against you. Most businesses lose it gradually, through sensible decisions that save money while conditions stay normal. You do not need a backup for everything. You need to know which dependencies would stop the business, how long you could cope without each one, and what one small step now would make switching possible. The free Plan B test checks any one dependency in five questions.
What a global diesel crisis reveals about the decisions businesses make long before trouble arrives.
The price of diesel rarely stays at the pump.
It finds its way into a haulier’s next quote, a manufacturer’s delivery costs, the price of food on a supermarket shelf and the margins of businesses with very little room left to absorb another increase. Most of the people affected have no influence over the price. They simply have to deal with it.
On 9 October 2026, after a call with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump announced that Russia would supply diesel to American and global markets. The US Treasury issued a temporary licence easing sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027, weeks after the President had signed a sweeping Russia sanctions law, as NPR reported. The decision drew immediate criticism, not least from Ukraine, and analysts doubted it would do much for prices; Forbes set out why.
The political and human consequences are far more serious than the commercial worries of an ordinary business, and the two should not be confused. But there is a narrower question worth asking.
What happens when the choices available today were narrowed by decisions made years earlier?
It applies to businesses of almost every size.
The cheapest decision can become the most expensive
Picture a business that has spent years cutting its operating costs. It has an excellent contract with its main supplier. Its software runs through every department. Its logistics are efficient and everyone knows exactly how things work. On paper there is very little waste.
Then the supplier changes its terms. Or the software provider announces a large price rise. Or transport costs jump.
The business discovers that changing anything is enormously difficult. Finding and qualifying another supplier could take months. Moving software could interrupt operations. Changing logistics might mean worse service or breaking a contract.
None of those alternatives looked important when the original decisions were made. Why keep a second supplier when the first is excellent? Why test a data export when the software works? Why pay for flexibility nobody needs?
They are reasonable questions. The trouble is that flexibility has a value that never appears in the original comparison. Committing to one arrangement saves money, and it also gives something up: the ability to change course quickly. Sometimes that trade is worth it. Sometimes it becomes the most expensive saving a company ever made.
We have become very good at measuring efficiency
Most businesses can tell you what they spend on suppliers, software, staff and transport. Far fewer can tell you what would happen if one of those arrangements stopped working.
An efficient business and a resilient business are not the same thing. Efficiency asks what something costs while conditions stay normal. Resilience asks what it would cost to carry on if they changed.
The OECD’s first Supply Chain Resilience Review, published in June 2025, found that the number of products countries source from a narrow set of suppliers was 50% higher in the early 2020s than in the late 1990s. It also reached a less obvious conclusion: simply bringing all production home would harm growth and weaken resilience rather than strengthen it. The answer it pointed to was not isolation but diversification, flexibility and better management of dependencies.
That translates rather well to an ordinary business. Two suppliers are not automatically safer than one if both rely on the same manufacturer, haulier or component. Moving software to a new provider does not help much if the underlying data is impossible to get out.
An alternative is only worth something if it is genuinely available when you need it.
The dependency nobody notices
Some dependencies are obvious. A manufacturer needs a particular material. A transport business needs fuel. A restaurant needs its deliveries.
Others grow quietly. A company adopts a software platform because it saves time. Over the years, processes form around it, staff learn its quirks, customer records pile up inside it and other systems get connected to it. Eventually it is no longer something the business uses. It is part of how the business works.
That can be entirely good. Useful software should matter. The question is what happens when the relationship changes. Can you get your information out in a form you can use? Do you own the accounts and the integrations? Could someone else run the system? Would replacing it mean rebuilding years of work?
If the answers are unclear, the business may have taken on an expensive dependency without ever agreeing to it. The same happens with contracts, sales channels and outsourced services. It does not take an unreliable supplier or a bad decision. Quite often the dependency forms precisely because the original arrangement worked so well.
What does it cost to keep your options open?
It would be easy to conclude that every business needs two of everything. That would be terrible advice.
Alternatives cost money. They take management time, can weaken your buying power and add complexity to a business that was simple. A small company cannot prepare for every imaginable disruption, and should not try.
The useful question is not whether a dependency exists. It is whether you understand it, whether its consequences are acceptable, and whether keeping an alternative ready would justify the cost.
For one business that means qualifying a second supplier without placing regular orders. For another it means making sure customer data can be exported and restored elsewhere. For a third, the sensible move is to keep things as they are and negotiate clearer protections in the contract. Different risks, different answers.
Resilience is not a shopping list. It is a series of commercial decisions.
Try the Plan B test
This needs no consultant, no new system and no strategic review. Pick one arrangement your business would struggle to run without: a supplier, a software provider, a major sales channel or a specialist service. Then answer five questions.
- What would actually stop? Not what would be inconvenient. What essential activity could no longer happen?
- How long could we manage without it? Hours, days or a month? The answer changes the kind of alternative you need.
- What would replacing it really involve? Time, cost, contracts, training, technical work and disruption to customers.
- Do we have a real alternative? A name on a list is not an alternative. Has anyone checked capacity, compatibility and how long a switch would take?
- What is the smallest sensible step we could take now? A conversation with the supplier, a documented process, a test export, a quote from a competitor. Or nothing, because the exposure is acceptable. That is still a useful answer, as long as it is a conscious one.
The US Small Business Administration’s continuity guidance makes the same point from the other direction: identify alternative vendors and understand your suppliers’ own recovery plans, before you need them.
One accountable partner should not mean one point of failure
There is an uncomfortable question here for anyone selling business services, us included.
A company should be able to simplify how it runs without handing over control. Working with one accountable partner can cut complexity, speed up decisions and end the familiar routine of several suppliers blaming each other. But that partner should never make itself impossible to replace.
The customer should keep access to its systems, data, accounts and work. Ownership should be clear. If the relationship ends, the business should still run. A good partnership should last because it keeps delivering value, not because leaving has become too hard.
Make the decision while you still have one
The diesel announcement will go on being argued over, and its politics and its real effect on prices deserve scrutiny in their own right. For business owners watching costs climb, there is another question.
How much of what happens to your business is genuinely outside your control, and how much of your ability to respond was settled by earlier choices?
Every company depends on something: customers, suppliers, people, technology. Complete independence is neither realistic nor desirable. The aim is to know where dependence turns into vulnerability, and what it would take to keep some freedom of movement.
Because the hardest time to find another option is the moment you discover you need one. By then, the price may no longer be yours to negotiate.
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