From a pandemic to recession and war, businesses across the globe have had a rough three years. Particularly here in the United States, a fluctuating economy, supply chain issues, and political unrest have caused uncertainty in all industries. The good news, according to a report released by PwC, is that this chaos will lead to higher resilience for most organizations if used wisely.
In 2019, only 23% of US organizations had a dedicated crisis response team despite nearly 90% expecting a crisis in the next two years. Most of the crisis teams were not equipped nor expecting anything like COVID-19 or any secondary crisis caused by the pandemic. Organizations that had taken a proactive approach and built crisis teams they found to be “very relevant” during the pandemic demonstrated the “hallmark of a resilient organization.”
Building resilience is key in an economy that shifts like the wind, and according to a McKinsey report released in April, understanding risk is at the heart of resilience. In an examination of the financial services industry, analysts found that moving forward on large-scale initiatives without also scaling up risk management resulted in backtracking the new initiatives and, in one case, a five-month delay of a brand-new cloud-native system.
Of course, there are steps to minimize inherent risks, like unauthorized access to data or a negative customer experience, termed by McKinsey as “risk-by-design.” By designing systems to tackle these risks before they can pose a threat to information security, data, or customer satisfaction, organizations build resilience into the core of operations.
The report by PwC defines resilience as “the ability to bounce back from a crisis or disruption…but also to enable and secure new possibilities.” While many industries suffered as a result of the pandemic and the crises that followed, we have seen them rebound and adapt as life returns to normal. The restaurant industry, for example, has found a way to stay afloat through two years of closures and pivots by taking on resilience as an operating model.
While the world may never return to a state of pre-pandemic normalcy, turning the lessons learned into patterns of understanding risk and resilience can only leave organizations better prepared for the future.
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