The 72‑Hour Playbook: Operational Continuity When You’re Unavailable

Core insight: short leader absences—travel, illness, deep-focus blocks—are predictable interruptions that too often trigger paralysis, ad-hoc escalations, and decision drift. The 72‑Hour Playbook is a one‑page, time‑boxed continuity artifact you create in minutes that pre-authorizes who acts, what may change, and what must wait until your return. This episode gives a durable, tool‑agnostic pattern: (1) a tight template—scope, temporary deputies, decision classes, safe‑mode rules, communication script, and reversion checkpoints; (2) three operational moves—pre-authorize reversible actions, wire AI agents to surface only Tier‑1 exceptions, and publish a short “what to do now” channel for the team; (3) a quick drill to validate the playbook in less than an hour. I’ll walk through concrete examples (planned travel, sudden illness, holiday handoff), exact AI prompt patterns for routing exceptions, and a single action: draft and publish your first 72‑Hour Playbook before your next absence. Result: fewer escalations, faster continuity, and preserved strategic bandwidth. Stay agentic.