Yesterday’s AWS outage stopped the internet in its tracks.
Websites went dark. Apps crashed. Critical services went offline. Even some of the biggest names in tech were suddenly dead in the water—not because they did anything wrong, but because the infrastructure they relied on failed.
It was a dramatic reminder of a truth most businesses prefer not to think about: no one is immune to failure. Not even Amazon.
And if the most sophisticated, well-resourced, process-driven company on the planet can experience a breakdown… what does that mean for the rest of us?
The uncomfortable answer: it means your business is just as vulnerable, probably more so.
The Myth of “It Won’t Happen to Us”
One of the most common mistakes I see leadership teams make is assuming their current systems are “good enough.” If sales are strong, operations seem stable, and no one is raising alarm bells, it’s easy to believe you’re safe.
But safety is often an illusion.
Behind the scenes, many companies are held together by duct-taped workflows, tribal knowledge, and heroic employees compensating for broken processes. There’s no clear documentation, no standardized way of working, and no plan for what happens when something or someone fails.
And when that failure inevitably comes? Chaos.
Projects stall. Customers get frustrated. Teams scramble. Leaders are forced into reactive decision-making, and all the energy that could’ve gone toward growth is instead spent on firefighting.
The AWS outage is a high-profile example of how even the best systems can go down. But for most companies, the stakes are even higher because they don’t have the resources, redundancies, or response playbooks Amazon does. If a single disruption can bring your business to its knees, that’s not bad luck. That’s a process problem.
Breakdowns Are Inevitable. Being Unprepared Is a Choice.
Here’s the truth: every company will face breakdowns.
Technology will fail. Supply chains will get disrupted. Key people will leave. Customer demands will shift. That’s not a possibility—it’s a guarantee.
The difference between companies that recover quickly and those that crumble isn’t how often they face problems. It’s how prepared they are before the problems happen.
This is why process matters.
Strong processes mean your team knows exactly what to do when things go wrong.
Strong processes mean you have clear lines of communication, defined roles, and built-in contingencies.
Strong processes mean you don’t waste valuable time figuring out how to respond — you just respond.
Think of it like a fire drill: you don’t plan an evacuation while the building is burning. You plan it long before so that when the alarm goes off, people move calmly and confidently toward safety.
The Real Cost of Weak Processes
Leaders often underestimate how much weak processes cost them — not just in dollars, but in momentum.
Here’s what I see again and again in organizations without operational discipline:
- Delayed decisions: No one knows who’s responsible, so problems bounce around until they become crises.
- Inconsistent execution: Teams solve the same problems over and over because there’s no standardized way to handle them.
- Lost trust: Customers lose faith when mistakes repeat or response times lag.
- Burnout: Employees get stuck in constant reaction mode, unable to focus on higher-value work.
And perhaps most damaging: innovation stalls.
It’s hard to build new products, expand into new markets, or scale operations when your team spends every day putting out fires. Weak processes don’t just create inefficiency—they rob you of the capacity to grow.
How World-Class Companies Turn Breakdowns Into Strength
If AWS’s failure proves anything, it’s that breakdowns are not a sign of incompetence. They’re a natural part of growth. But what sets the best companies apart is what they do next.
World-class organizations use breakdowns as catalysts for continuous improvement.
They don’t sweep issues under the rug — they investigate the root cause, update their processes, and ensure the same failure doesn’t happen again. They treat every disruption as data, every mistake as an opportunity to build resilience.
This mindset is the foundation of the PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) — the same approach Toyota used to become the global gold standard in operational excellence.
- Plan: Anticipate risks and design processes to prevent or minimize them.
- Do: Execute those processes consistently.
- Check: Measure what worked and what didn’t.
- Act: Improve the process and repeat.
Over time, this cycle compounds. Each iteration makes your operations more stable, more scalable, and more resilient — so that when the next “outage” hits, you’re ready.
2026: The Year to Stop “Winging It”
The start of a new year is when leaders love to talk about growth — new revenue targets, ambitious product launches, bold expansion plans. But growth without strong processes is like building a skyscraper on a shaky foundation: impressive at first, but one big gust of wind can knock it over.
So here’s my challenge to you as we head into 2026:
Stop leaving your business’s future to chance.
Audit your most critical processes.
Document what’s currently living in people’s heads.
Identify your single points of failure — and design around them.
Create escalation paths for when things go wrong.
And most importantly, commit to continuous improvement, not one-time fixes.
You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. But you do need to start — because resilience isn’t built in the middle of a crisis. It’s built in advance.
Final Thought: If Amazon Can Go Down, So Can You
The AWS outage wasn’t just an IT story. It was a leadership lesson.
It reminded us that no company—no matter how big, how well-funded, or how experienced—is immune to failure. But it also showed that failure doesn’t have to be fatal. With the right processes in place, it can be a springboard for stronger systems, smarter decisions, and sustained growth.
So ask yourself: if something critical in your business went down tomorrow, would you be ready? Or would you be scrambling?
2026 is your chance to build the kind of organization that doesn’t just survive disruption—it thrives through it.
