What is resilience? It’s what helps individuals and organisations bounce back from adversity. The result of experience, ability and strength, resilience is a dynamic process that has to be developed over time, and continually tested to gauge its fitness for purpose. Within the business context, resilience is what keeps companies going, and sustains them through difficult times. It can be a combination of factors – sufficient resources, capable leadership, correct strategy etc – but companies that have successfully dealt with adversity all have one thing in common: they learned from bitter experiences, and were able to apply this knowledge effectively, when they were faced with adversity again.
When the Covid-19 pandemic first started to spread, organisations were generally quite quick to take action. But as the virus raged globally, and countries closed borders as millions fell ill, industries were ravaged, and the supply chain was threatened as never before. It became evident that businesses were not as resilient as they thought they were, and there had actually been little attention paid to the possibility of disaster on a worldwide scale. Governments scrambled to prop up their respective economies; big pharma went into overdrive to find a vaccine; some firms even managed to profit by ramping up production of items like detergents, sanitisers and personal protection equipment.
15 The IERP® Monthly Newsletter September - November 2021
The Race to Operational Resilience In The New Normal