In a vacuum, the goal of resilience is clear: Rapidly and successfully cycle through three phases—Respond, Recover and Thrive—for any disruption. i Yet, how to accomplish that goal can vary considerably depending on the nature of the disruption. In conversations with executives, we learned that context is critical in resilience and a one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective.
To help executives more dynamically integrate resilience into their business, we analysed our conversations with 20 global executives, uncovering four primary postures businesses take depending on the context of disruptions. And while each of these postures have a place in the resilience system, we explore the opportunities and challenges of activating each one—along with the potential risks of limiting resilience to solely being a short-term, crisis response tool.
It’s clear through our interviews that businesses interpret and activate resilience in a variety of ways. And while there are nuances across each business, two overarching dimensions regularly underly each resilience posture:
As each business faces its own unique set of disruptions in the pursuit of its long-term goals, it’s worth considering these two points: