Resilience Across Six Dimensions for Healthy Business Continuity

In this recovery phase of pandemic where most businesses are getting back on their feet, organizations can build a resilient growth strategy to tackle the challenges and the ever-changing business circumstances. The mantra, “to expect the unexpected” while ensuring agility, resilience, and company growth reinforce each other.

So, what is resilience? How do decision-makers look at resilience and agility intending to drive healthy growth and sustainability within a company? What are the parameters to gauge and manage resilience to identify inefficiencies, cope with growth opportunities, and find different ways to empower their employees to get the job done?

This blog answers these questions. It entails six dimensions for companies seeking to manage and instill effective ways for achieving healthy company growth.

1. Thrive on Financial  Resilience for Contingency

Businesses faced acute financial burn pressures due to a drop in activity levels in 2020. To thrive moving forward, companies must develop financial resilience to endure the unpredictable change or threat. A balance between short-and long-term financial goals for their business with a paramount focus on financial growth and expansion necessitates the need for a new approach.

Organizations need to develop specific financial resilience capabilities where critical cash flow risk management, capitalism, and sufficient finance and liquidity are balanced to weather a volatile environment. Financial resilience satisfies that need to safeguard your business against reduced access to debt, capital, or equity-based on attributes like stress testing, forecasting, crisis response, and backup planning.

2. Reputational Resilience Strengthens Business Culture  

A company’s reputation is one of its biggest assets. The impact of reputational damage doesn’t fit into a single function. Instead, organizations are judged by the way they envision and handle a crisis over online media, or through public compensation for products and services, or on environmental, social-economic, or geopolitical issues.

Strong risk culture and institutional resilience are critical in an organization’s defense to overcome such uncertain jolts. Companies adopt reputational resilience strategies to identify risks from an outside-in perspective and stay ready for accountability and crisis. It helps to increase their reputational resilience and harness their reputations to enhance their corporate strategies forward.

3. Operational  Resilience  Helps Companies Perform Efficiently

Anything that could hinder your organization’s goals is a disruption that needs resolution. The ability to bounce back after disruptions or risks caused due to natural or human disasters, economic downturns, cyber-attacks, supply chain interruptions, loss of infrastructure, war, or civil unrest demands resilience.

Operational resilience materially structures an organization’s overall growth strategy to drive investment, business continuity, and day-to-day decisions. It can flex to remain stable in any operational disruption and yet meet the changing business demands fortifying supply chains and delivery mechanisms without a hassle.

4. Adapt Business Model  Resilience for Sustainable Growth

Companies today are building resilient operating models and cultures by transforming their business models and revolutionizing industry sectors to maintain cross-functional agility in operations. They’re focused on improving efficiencies in a closed-loop model that creates more value from lesser inputs.

Adaptation to the changing global competitive landscape, technological advancements, customer demands, regulatory terrain, or building a brand ecosystem with data-rich and digitally driven processes allows most organizations to withstand the shifting trends in each front. Through new business models, they ensure it delivers sustainable growth within the resource and operational budget.

5. Think Systematically with Organizational  Resilience

Why are some organizations more resilient than their peers? Because resilient organizations are prepared for adversity and yet stay proactive and flexible when faced with a crisis.

Institutions built on sheer organizational resilience change mindsets from top-down decision-making to fostering a diverse workforce where every employee feels involved and performs at their best. Firms that recruit and deploy the best talent equitably in their company, reskill, or promote employees based on performance and without a lens of bias, often carry out the operations based on dynamic self-management and continual adaptation techniques.

6. Technological  Resilience  Maintains Business Continuity

Customer demands, priorities, and touchpoints are changing rapidly as businesses constantly digitize and technological advancements increase rapidly. As many organizations face a continual cycle of triage, each year dealing with costly system failures and technology crises, companies need to improve technological resiliency to keep pace with regulatory requirements and competitive demands if something goes sideways.

Technologically resilient organizations focus on improving incident response and invest in robust IT infrastructure to reduce technology system outages, manage cyber-threats and other expensive tech breakdowns. Companies maintain robust disaster recovery and business continuity through technology resilience, avoiding operational disruptions at a workplace or for customers.

Conclusion

Developing specific resilience capabilities is key as resilient organizations withstand the volatility due to internal and external pressures. Having a resilient growth strategy imbibed in an organization’s culture is integral to align with the company’s broader context, values, and guardianship, allowing businesses to thrive and turn risks and uncertainties into new opportunities. Organizations must be intelligently flexible to meet the challenges of the future head-on and respond without friction to new circumstances.