The THREATS Framework: A Strategic Planning System for the 7 Critical Threats Every Business Must Plan For
Most businesses never plan for the things that can destroy them. Owners spend thousands of hours on revenue strategy, marketing, hiring, and growth. They spend zero hours asking what happens when something goes catastrophically wrong.
The THREATS Framework is a structured planning system built for business owners running companies in the $10M to $250M revenue range. It identifies seven categories of threats that can derail a business, and provides a time-boxed planning session that produces a crisis response playbook your leadership team can execute the moment a threat materializes.
KEY TAKEAWAY:
The THREATS Framework organizes every business threat into seven categories: Turnover, Hacks, Reputation, Economic disruption, Actions (legal/regulatory), Trouble (employee crises), and Surprises (disasters and black swans). Each category is addressed through a four-tier response protocol covering the first two hours through the first seven days of a crisis. The completed playbook becomes both an operational asset and a due diligence differentiator in M&A transactions.
What does the THREATS Framework do that SWOT analysis does not?
SWOT analysis identifies that threats exist but provides no structure for categorizing specific threat types or building response plans for each one.
The THREATS Framework picks up where SWOT’s “T” quadrant ends. It breaks that single quadrant into seven distinct, actionable categories and attaches a four-tier response protocol to each one. SWOT is a diagnostic tool. THREATS is an execution tool. A completed THREATS playbook tells your leadership team exactly who acts, what happens, and what gets communicated at every stage of a crisis. For companies preparing for acquisition, it also signals operational maturity to buyers conducting due diligence.
What are the seven threat categories in the THREATS Framework?
The THREATS Framework organizes every business crisis into seven categories, each represented by a letter of the acronym. Together, they cover the full spectrum of threats a mid-market company can face.
T — Turnover: Key Person Loss, Sudden Death, and Critical Departures. Every business has people whose sudden absence would create an operational crisis. This includes the founder, top revenue producers, technical leads, and any individual holding institutional knowledge that has never been documented. In M&A due diligence, key person dependency is one of the most common reasons deals fall apart or valuations get discounted.
H — Hacks: Cybersecurity Breaches, Data Loss, and Technology Failures. Sixty percent of small businesses that suffer a cyber attack go out of business within six months. For mid-market companies, the threats include ransomware, data breaches, phishing attacks, system outages, and vendor compromises. The cost extends beyond the technical fix to include regulatory fines, legal liability, and permanent reputation damage.
R — Reputation: PR Disasters, Public Scandals, and Brand Crises. A reputation crisis can move from a single social media post to national coverage in under 24 hours. The most common threats include viral negative content, executive misconduct, product failures, and unintended association with controversial issues. Reputation crises are rarely about the incident. They are about the response.
E — Economic: Financial Disruption, Cash Flow Crises, and Market Shifts. Financial crises come as sudden shocks or slow bleeds. For companies in the $10M to $250M range, the most dangerous financial threat is revenue concentration. If more than 20 percent of your revenue comes from a single client, you are one phone call away from a crisis.
A — Actions: Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Threats. Regulatory and legal exposure is expanding across every industry. The most dangerous aspect is that legal threats often begin silently. A compliance gap you do not know about can result in fines, lawsuits, or criminal liability. For companies preparing for acquisition, unresolved legal exposure is a deal killer.
T — Trouble: Employee Misconduct, Workplace Violence, and Internal Conflict. This covers embezzlement, fraud, harassment, discrimination, workplace violence, whistleblower complaints, and hostile work environment situations. It is the threat category most business owners refuse to think about until it happens.
S — Surprises: Natural Disasters, Black Swan Events, and Unforeseen Disruptions. These are the threats you cannot predict but must plan for. The COVID-19 pandemic proved that businesses with continuity plans survived while those without them did not. Businesses with frameworks for responding to the unknown consistently outperform those making it up in real time.
How does the THREATS planning session work?
The THREATS Framework is designed to be completed in a single focused session of four to eight hours by a company’s core leadership team.
The session walks the team through each of the seven threat categories in sequence. For each category, the team identifies their specific vulnerabilities, names a response leader, and builds a four-tier response plan covering the first two hours, 24 hours, 72 hours, and seven days. The output is a completed THREATS Playbook that assigns accountability, documents communication protocols, and provides a ready-to-execute plan for each threat type. The session requires a minimum of three people and should not exceed ten. Participants should include the CEO or owner, operations lead, financial lead, head of HR, and legal counsel.
What is the four-tier response protocol in the THREATS Framework?
The four-tier response protocol structures every crisis response across four time-based phases: Immediate (first 2 hours), 24 Hours, 72 Hours, and 7 Days.
Each tier answers three questions: Who acts? What happens? What do we say? The Immediate tier focuses on stopping the bleeding and activating the chain of command. The 24-Hour tier focuses on containment, damage assessment, and stakeholder communication. The 72-Hour tier focuses on stabilization, recovery execution, and public messaging. The 7-Day tier focuses on full operational recovery, post-incident review, and policy updates. This tiered approach prevents the most common crisis response failure: reacting to everything at once instead of prioritizing actions by urgency.
How does the THREATS Framework increase business value for M&A?
A completed THREATS Playbook serves as a due diligence asset that signals operational maturity and leadership depth to potential acquirers.
Buyers evaluate risk as aggressively as they evaluate revenue. A company that can demonstrate documented crisis preparedness across all seven threat categories reduces the buyer’s perceived risk, which directly impacts valuation multiples. Key person dependency, cybersecurity posture, regulatory compliance, and business continuity planning are all standard areas of due diligence inquiry. The THREATS Framework addresses every one of them in a single documented system. It connects directly to the SCORE Framework for exit readiness assessment, the SCALE Framework for operational growth, and the DRIVER Test for execution capability.
Who should use the THREATS Framework?
The THREATS Framework was built for owners and leadership teams of companies generating $10M to $250M in annual revenue.
These are companies large enough that a crisis could cost millions, yet small enough that they rarely have dedicated risk management teams. If you are building your company toward an eventual exit, if you carry key person dependency risk, if your revenue is concentrated in a small number of clients, or if you have never conducted a structured threat assessment, the THREATS Framework is designed for your situation. It is also valuable for private equity portfolio companies that need to demonstrate operational resilience to investors and limited partners.
How does the THREATS Framework connect to Scott Sylvan Bell’s other frameworks?
The THREATS Framework is the protective layer in a comprehensive 320-point business assessment system that includes LAUNCH, SCORE, SELL, SCALE, DRIVER, and EXIT.
LAUNCH (30 points) assesses action readiness. SCORE (100 points) evaluates overall exit readiness. SELL (40 points) measures revenue quality. SCALE (50 points) assesses operational capacity. DRIVER (60 points) tests execution capability. EXIT (40 points) evaluates timing and market readiness. THREATS adds the crisis protection layer that prevents external shocks from destroying the value these other frameworks help build. The positioning is simple: you SCALE the business, SCORE its value, and SHIELD it with THREATS.
You spent years building your business. You can spend one day protecting it.
To schedule a facilitated THREATS Planning Session or download the THREATS Assessment Checklist, contact Scott Sylvan Bell.
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