Seeking new horizons
Recent years have shown that disruption has come to stay. But what does that mean for organisations around the world? All kinds of organisations continue to face events that may alter the competitive landscape either rapidly or slowly and sometimes for better, often for worse.
Under this circumstances, senior executives and boards often resort to the concept and practice of resilience for their organisation which can be seen as the capability to be prepared for disruption and to adapt and thrive in a changing environment.
It is to say that the practice of resilience isn’t purely defensive in its orientation but is also progressive, building the capacity for agility, adaption, learning and regeneration to ensure that organisations are able to deal with more complex and severe and are ready and able to continue thriving in the future.
Let’s focus
Navigating the constellation of markets, events and opportunities to preserve value and sustain growth is not an easy task.
An integrated approach to resilience can help organisations to focus on promulgating coordinated resilience across the entire enterprise instead of keeping it in siloed functions and on organisational rather than point-specific responses to events.
Such an approach to resilience can help organisations to sustain success during rolling risk events, such as climate change, pandemics and economic or social trends among many others. Senior Leaders grasp the importance of the responsibility to increase or at least maintain growth regardless of prevailing conditions, particularly given the widespread impact of recent risk events and do believe that their organisations outperform their peers in times of disruption.1
How to invest wisely
Organisations need to make sure how they can benefit from well-balanced investments in resilience.
This journey often begins with a minimalist approach as often seen in organisation that tend to underinvest in resilience. This has shown as a risk because although those organisations keep their investment in resilience low, they struggle to adapt and to recover during risk events and end up with unnecessary or outsized costs. In addition, they are rarely able to scape up quickly enough to seize the opportunities certain events may present.
On the other hand, organisations that overinvest in a specific area of resilience often struggle to remain cost competitive against their leaner peers. They also may be underinvesting in other key areas of resilience.
So, it’s decisive for an organisation to identify its “sweet spot” regarding investments in overall resilience and in specific capabilities.
Steps to Building an Enterprise view of Resilience
Of course, the business case for enhancing and maintaining resilience will differ for every organisation depending on their industry, scope of operations, strategy, business model, risks and opportunities and potential impacts. But there are certain steps your organisation can take towards greater resilience that might include the following:
- Assess current capabilities
- Understand your current approach
- Quantify resources invested
- Identify your options
- Weigh potential costs and benefits
- Tap outside expertise
We trust that the time to assess and enhance organisational resilience is now, despite – or, actually, because of – the disruption we all continue to experience. We also stand ready to assist you in any aspect of your journey towards greater resilience.
This article is part our Integrated Risk Management series, which explores various themes and approaches to management and governing risk
