Considering a career in resilience?

Note: This piece originally appeared as a blog post in support of BCI Education Month. For more complimentary articles and resources, you may visit the following link: https://www.thebci.org/index.php/training-education/education-month-2017.

Allow me to confess – I didn’t grow up thinking I would be involved in organizational resilience.

I have been involved in research and education for most of my professional life before ‘falling into’ a resilience related role at the BCI. You may imagine how steep the learning curve was, having to learn everything from scratch! I also didn’t have the luxury that many professionals had with backgrounds in IT, risk or security. Nonetheless, after considerable effort, I could say it was one of the best things that have happened to me.

It couldn’t have been a better time to come into the profession. The buzz about organizational resilience and the flurry of activity around it have generated lots of interest among business leaders and practitioners alike. I have been fortunate to travel and meet people around the world in my role which reinforces the perception that something big is indeed happening. The research also shows a changing industry. The potential for the profession to make a significant impact on how we manage our organizations is growing and set to grow even further.

Of course there are also significant challenges ahead. Organizational resilience is a relatively young field. There’s much work to be done in harmonising guidance, tools and techniques in related disciplines. The lasting value of resilience has yet to be translated in many organizations lest it becomes treated as another business buzzword.

I am nonetheless confident that organizational resilience will considerably impact organizations in the years to come. Much of this confidence comes from the growing number of entrants to the profession – young, highly educated and coming from diverse backgrounds. Complementing the knowledge and skills of experienced professionals who have earned their stripes, our industry is certainly in a good place.

The guidance and resources to help professionals throughout their working lives are also growing. Our recent BCM Futures and salary benchmarking reports for one show the tantalising opportunities and rewards in store for individuals who choose resilience as their career. There’s much to achieve in this field and the call to ‘discover business continuity and resilience’ could have never been more apt. So go ahead and look at the possibilities a career in resilience has in store – you might be pleasantly surprised as I was.