Resilience strategies are critical to sustaining long-term success

Today, more than ever before, business leaders are thinking about the existential threats they might face over the next five to ten years. Organisations have always navigated macro shocks, market shifts and economic headwinds – but today it feels different.

“Today’s world is chaotic and uncertain,” explains Airmic’s CEO Julia Graham. “Supply chains are increasingly volatile, and risks are emerging in less predictable ways.

“Many of today’s organisations evolved in the old-world order and feel uncomfortable in the new, troubled world. That is why we are seeing a renewed focus on resilience – our ability to respond, adapt and innovate in the face of change has never been more important than it is today.”

Resilience, she continues, is not just a buzz word – it is a discipline, closely related to risk, that demands a robust and systematic approach – and risk professionals have a central role to play.

With resilience rising up the corporate agenda, Airmic and the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) have published a report, Putting Organizational Resilience into Practice. It examines the core principles of resilience and – through seven candid case studies – offers a unique snapshot of how major organisations are approaching resilience today.

Thriving not surviving

One of the core messages of the report is that organisations with greater resilience maturity don’t just respond better to crises – they derive strategic and competitive advantages.

“While resilience measures were once driven by regulatory needs, our research showed organisations are starting to understand that it is a strategic opportunity to strengthen the business,” says the author of the report, BCI’s David Honour.

“Companies that enter a crisis from a position of resilience may take market share over the long term – not just in the initial recovery. We saw that during the Covid pandemic and we are starting to see it in today’s major systemic challenges.”

Graham agrees, noting that resilient businesses are more innovative. “Uncertainty reshapes the way that leaders behave. It can make people short term, less agile and more anxious.

“Conversely, resilient businesses view uncertainty differently – as a source of opportunity. Innovation and resilience are closely related.”

Resilience maturity

Airmic and the BCI have been at the forefront of resilience developments for over a decade and the collaboration offered a chance to re-examine the Eight Principles of Resilience developed by Airmic in previous flagship research projects, and to understand how organisations apply them in practice today.

“We got really positive results,” notes Honour. “All of the eight long-standing principles are still highly relevant. Only one was not universally accepted by the study participants. This was the Reinvent Purpose principle, which created some debate.”

The research concluded that the eight principles of resilience were more deeply embedded within organisations today than five or ten years ago, he said.

“We are on a clear trajectory. Today, mature organisations see resilience as a strategic governance requirement. It starts at the top of the organisation, and that’s a big change.”

Technology and AI are proving positive drivers, as organisations consider the opportunities for data extraction and using digital twins to understand risk cascades and interdependencies. “AI is seen as really exciting. Yes, it’s also a risk to be managed and governance remains a challenge, but companies are seeing it as a game-changer.”

Few organisations are considered fully mature, and North American organisations generally lag their European counterparts, he noted. “But even in companies where there remains progress to be made, their vision was in the right place and that was encouraging.”

Key barriers to developing resilience maturity include getting full board buy-in and breaking down resilience-related siloes within the business.

"It’s a difficult thing to achieve quickly,” says Honour. “Taking your board with you and integrating departmental siloes requires culture change and that doesn’t happen overnight.”

Practical steps for risk professionals

Risk and resilience are intricately linked and risk professionals have a leading role to play, says Graham: “You can’t be resilient without managing risk well. Resilience maturity and risk maturity are closely related.”

Risk professionals should start by understanding where their organisations sit on the maturity curve. “The Airmic-BCI report is a fantastic place to start,” says Julia.

“Read it and benchmark your organisation against the model fundamentals – it’s very important to develop metrics. Companies can then use the principles of resilience to build a sensible organisation-wide approach.”

Over the past decade, the concept of resilience has matured and broadened and – according to the report – is now shifting from a primarily operational discipline into a strategic capability linked to long-term competitiveness.

As organisations are increasingly exposed to vulnerabilities outside their direct control, risk professionals have an opportunity.

Their organisational reach, breadth of knowledge and ability to link long-term risks to short-term business objectives puts them in a strong place to support their board and drive the resilience agenda within their organisations.

Putting Organizational Resilience into Practice

Download report now!

Airmic and the BCI have collaborated to create a principles-based body of knowledge that will guide organisations and risk professionals in building resilience and share emerging good practice.

As well as offering a framework to assess and develop resilience, it offers practical guidance and checklists.

It also uncovers how strategic resilience is managed in today’s major organisations, through seven in-depth case studies.

The case studies have been anonymised to allow for candid assessments – and the result is seven honest deep dives that illuminate the challenges and opportunities of achieving resilience in a fast-paced world.

“Putting Organizational Resilience into Practice provides insights into how real-life organisations are actually managing and governing resilience…it offers a unique snapshot of strategic resilience management and, as such, is a strong addition to the resilience profession’s body of knowledge.”
– David Thorp, Executive Director, BCI