Why Redundancy Is Disappearing — And What That Means for Resilience

The Celtic — February 23, 2026

There was a time when redundancy was seen as a strength.

Extra capacity meant flexibility.
Backup systems meant breathing room.
Additional staff meant recovery time.

Today, redundancy is often framed as inefficiency.

Lean operations.
Optimized staffing.
Just-in-time supply chains.
Maximum utilization.

Each of these makes sense on its own. Together, they have quietly stripped many organizations of the very margins that once made resilience possible.

Efficiency Has a Cost We Don’t Like to Name

Modern organizations are under constant pressure to do more with less.

Budgets tighten.
Staffing shrinks.
Systems consolidate.
Timelines compress.

Over time, redundancy is reframed not as protection, but as waste.

Emergency managers recognize the risk immediately: systems designed to operate at full capacity during normal conditions have nothing left to absorb disruption. When something fails, there is no buffer — only reaction.

Redundancy Didn’t Disappear Overnight

The erosion of redundancy is rarely intentional.

It happens incrementally:

A backup role is left vacant “temporarily.”
A secondary system isn’t replaced when it ages out.
Cross-training is postponed.
A vendor becomes the sole provider by default.
A manual process is retired without a tested replacement.

Each decision feels reasonable at the time.
Collectively, they remove options.

By the time leaders realize redundancy is gone, rebuilding it is far more difficult — and far more expensive.

What Emergency Managers See When Margins Vanish

Celtic Edge was founded by emergency managers who have worked incidents where redundancy no longer existed — only improvisation.

In those moments, patterns repeat:

• staff stretch beyond safe limits

• single systems carry entire operations

• minor failures cascade into major disruptions

• leaders are forced into tradeoffs they never planned for

• recovery takes longer than expected

Emergency managers don’t romanticize redundancy.
They understand it as the space where decisions can still be made thoughtfully instead of urgently.

Lean Operations Are Fragile Operations

Efficiency assumes stability.

Redundancy assumes disruption.

When operations are optimized for speed and cost alone, resilience becomes conditional — dependent on everything going right. In a risk environment defined by cyber threats, climate stress, workforce fragility, and third-party dependency, that assumption no longer holds.

Lean systems recover slowly because they have nothing to fall back on.

The Human Consequences of Lost Redundancy

When redundancy disappears, people absorb the impact.

Longer shifts.
Fewer days off.
Constant escalation.
Burnout framed as dedication.
Heroics mistaken for sustainability.

Emergency managers see this pattern clearly: when systems lack slack, the workforce becomes the buffer — until it can’t.

That is not resilience.
It is exhaustion.

Where Redundancy Still Matters Most

Not all redundancy looks the same, but some areas demand it:

Decision authority — more than one person who can act
Knowledge — more than one person who understands critical systems
Staffing — surge capacity that exists before it’s needed
Technology — degraded modes, not just backups
Vendors — alternatives identified, not assumed
Communication — multiple ways to reach people

Organizations that retain redundancy in these areas don’t avoid disruption — they navigate it with more control.

What Rebuilding Redundancy Actually Looks Like

Reintroducing redundancy doesn’t mean reversing every efficiency gain.

It means making deliberate choices:

• deciding where failure is unacceptable

• identifying where single points of failure exist

• restoring margin where it matters most

• acknowledging that resilience costs something

• treating redundancy as an investment, not a liability

Emergency managers understand that redundancy is not about comfort — it’s about options.

A Final Thought

Resilience is not built by perfect efficiency.

It is built by margin.

Margin to think.
Margin to adapt.
Margin to recover.

As redundancy disappears, so does that margin.

Organizations entering 2026 must decide whether they want systems that look efficient on paper — or systems that can withstand pressure when it arrives.

Emergency managers already know the answer.