How do you benchmark and learn from other resilient businesses in your industry?

1 Identify resilience metrics and indicators

Defining what resilience means for your business and how to measure it is the first step to benchmarking your resilience. While there is no universal approach to resilience metrics, some common ones include financial performance and stability, operational efficiency and flexibility, organizational culture and capabilities, and stakeholder relationships and reputation. To track and evaluate these metrics, you can use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data over time and in various scenarios. Financial performance metrics may include revenue, cash flow, profitability, liquidity, and debt ratio; operational efficiency metrics may include productivity, quality, inventory, delivery, and customer satisfaction; organizational culture metrics may include employee engagement, retention, diversity, innovation, and learning; while stakeholder relationship metrics may include customer loyalty, supplier reliability, partner collaboration, and social responsibility.

2 Research and analyze your industry peers

The next step to benchmark your resilience is to research and analyze your industry peers and competitors. You can use industry reports, market research, case studies, media coverage, social media, and online reviews to gain insights into their resilience performance and practices. Additionally, tools such as SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces analysis, and PESTLE analysis can be used to assess their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and external factors that affect their resilience. To compare your resilience with your peers, make sure to ask yourself how they cope with recent disruptions or crises in your industry and understand what their resilience goals and strategies are and also what their resilience metrics and indicators are. Additionally, you need to ask yourself how they monitor and evaluate their resilience performance and progress, what their resilience strengths and weaknesses are, and finally, what their resilience opportunities and threats are.

3 Learn from their best practices and gaps

The final step to benchmark your resilience is to learn from your peers' best practices and gaps. You can identify the strategies that have enabled them to build high levels of resilience and adaptability, such as investing in digital transformation, diversifying revenue streams, building a resilient culture, fostering innovation and learning, engaging with stakeholders, and managing risks proactively. Additionally, you can identify the gaps and challenges that have hindered their resilience, such as relying on outdated systems, having a rigid organizational structure, lacking a clear vision and values, ignoring customer feedback, neglecting employee well-being, and being complacent or reactive. By benchmarking and learning from other resilient businesses in your industry, you can gain valuable insights to enhance your own resilience and competitiveness. Furthermore, the benchmarking process can be used as an opportunity to collaborate with your peers and share resilience experiences and lessons.