Importance of Resilience and Agility through Times of Disruption and Crisis

Resilience is a term used within the business community and academia, often with various meanings. It commonly refers to the ability to bounce back and return to a previous state after a disturbance. In the context of enterprises, the term describes the ability to maintain core capabilities, identity and structure, and the capacity for agile transformation. For an organization to be resilient, it thus needs to be capable of handling systemic disruptions that can be random, accidental, or even intentional. (Bawany 2025).

To achieve organizational high performance in an era of constant disruption and crisis, both agility and resilience are important. This author defines both terms as follows:

Agility refers to the ability to make a rapid change and achieve flexibility in various aspects of the operations, in response to changes or disruptive events in the external environment that could be characterized as a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and disruptive (VUCAD) environment.

It can also be viewed as the capacity for responding with speed and flexibly and decisively toward anticipating, initiating, and taking advantage of opportunities and avoiding any negative consequences of change (Bawany 2023).

Resilience refers to the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and recover from disasters, emergencies, and other disruptions, and protect and enhance workforce and customer engagement, supply network and financial performance, organizational productivity, and community well-being when disruption occurs.

It can also be viewed as the capacity for resisting, absorbing, and responding, even reinventing, if necessary, in response to fast and/or disruptive change that cannot be avoided such as the “black swan” events (Bawany 2023).

Leaders should also explore opportunities for developing collective agility where major challenges require entire systems to be agile and adaptable.

Living in an uncertain world where ecosystems grow in number and complexity brings into focus ways to deal with, survive, and even evolve around disruptive events. Recent world events such as the pandemic and its consequences on businesses have intensified discussions on disruptive changes, risk management, and other means of strengthening resilience.

The disruptive events of the past often have had short-term business impacts as leaders seek to return to a state of normalcy. However, we are now in an era of cumulative and extreme disruption that should more sustainably change future decision-making. For example, some immediate consequences of the war in Ukraine could be medium- to long-term sanctions and countersanctions, commodity shortages, and supply chain disruption—so companies need to factor them in as part of their agenda.

RESILIENCE

During times of crisis, these thriving leaders remain calm and sustain their energy levels under pressure, to cope with and adapt to disruptive changes. They bounce back from setbacks. They also overcome major difficulties without engaging in dysfunctional behavior or harming others. Resilient leaders are genuinely, sincerely empathetic, walking compassionately in the shoes of employees, customers, and their broader ecosystems.

The well-being and resilience of self and others are more important now than ever before. Role modeling around well-being will be important for leadership success as well as the need for clear messaging on psychological first aid, well-being, and mental health from the business.

These leaders in the middle of a crisis are faced with a flurry of urgent issues across what seems like innumerable fronts. Resilient leaders zero in on the most pressing of these, establishing priority areas that can quickly cascade.

AGILITY

While much of the above is self-explanatory, the need for agility when facing future crises is especially important. One positive phenomenon of the crisis has been the speed at which the leaders of many of these organizations have accelerated their uptake of technology, built resilience into their supply chains, and created alternative revenue streams. Some of these changes, such as Unilever shifting from producing skin care products to cleaning and hygiene products, were simply demand-driven. In other cases, these have been to develop or expand online distribution channels and move from B2B to B2C models. While many of these pivots extend existing capacity and are aligned with the organization’s strategy, some might be permanent. Importantly, the agile decision-making that leads to these shifts needs to be embedded into the organizational DNA as organizations set the path to recovery.

Agility and resiliency are highly correlated concepts, and both are essential for adapting to disruption and times of crisis. It is important to understand that they are not the same, yet they are often confused in management literature and by business leaders and practitioners.

Several decades ago, businesses were built to last. The successful companies were the stable companies—those that consistently, dependably offered a product or service desired by the masses. The goal for those running these businesses was to eliminate uncertainty, complexity, and variability where possible.

A successful business knows when to bend, pivot, and change to accommodate forces more powerful than itself, a process that requires business agility. Business agility can be used to adjust to market changes in addition to internal business changes.

Business agility refers to the company’s ability to quickly adapt to changes and fluctuations in its business environment. The faster a company can adjust its business strategy, the higher its business agility. Business agility is an organizational method to help businesses adapt quickly to market changes that are either external or internal. If a business is set up to respond rapidly and with the flexibility to meet customer demands, they’re more likely to thrive and keep those customers.

Resilient organizations are those that rebound and prosper after business disruption because they’re adaptive, agile, and sustainable. Resilient organizations have resilient leaders who see change as opportunities for continued growth rather than a source of anxiety and fear. Response, recovery, and contingencies are the basis of resilience.

References:

Bawany, S. (2025). The Making of a CR.I.S.I.S. Leader. Business Expert Press (BEP) LLC. New York, NY.

Bawany, S. (2023). Leadership in Disruptive Times: Negotiating the New Balance. Business Expert Press (BEP) LLC. New York, NY.

Bawany, S. (2020). Leadership in Disruptive Times. Business Expert Press (BEP) LLC. New York, NY.

Bawany S. (2020a). “Talent Management for a Digital-Centric Future Workplace: Competencybased selection of future ‘disruptive digital leaders’” in Talent Management Excellence (TME), December 2020 Issue.

Bawany S. (2020b). “Developing ‘Disruptive Digital Leaders’ for the Post Pandemic Era: Ensuring leadership readiness for a digital-centric future workplace in the ‘new normal’” in Leadership Excellence (LE), November 2020 Issue.

Bawany S. (2020c). “Driving Performance Management in Digitally-Driven Organizations:?Coaching for the performance of ‘disruptive digital leaders’ in the post-pandemic new normal“ in Human Capital Management (HCM) Excellence (APAC and the Middle East). September 2020 Issue.

Bawany S. (2020d). Leadership in Disruptive Times. New York, NY: Business Express Press (BEP) Inc., LLC. July 2020

Bawany S. (2020e). “The Future Role of HR in the Aftermath of COVID-19 Crisis: Transformation of the Digital-driven Workplace in the ‘New Normal’.” HR Strategy and Planning (HRSP) Excellence, May 2020 Issue.

Bawany S. (2020f) “Forum: Government Taking Decisive Action to Fight Pandemic” The Straits Times (date accessed May 30, 2020).

Bawany S. (2019). Transforming the Next Generation of Leaders: Developing Future Leaders for a Disruptive, Digital-Driven Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). Business Expert Press (BEP) LLC. New York, NY.

Bawany S. (2019). “Leadership 4.0: How Ready Are You to Be a Digital Leader?” Leadership Excellence (LE) Essentials. February 2019 Issue.

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