Let’s talk about “resilience”

One term that has a pretty good chance of being voted business word of the year is "resilience". I believe it is about time to explain what we mean when we use the term.

First of all, it is essential to reiterate that all companies and organizations a) are different and b) are affected in different ways by the pandemic. But what is evident from my conversations with customers across all industries is that they now have a much higher sense of urgency to accelerate their digital transformation as compared to some month ago. Even organizations that were farther along in their digital transformation journey before the pandemic now want to move more quickly. The imperative isn’t just to transform, but to improve agility, speed to market, and stability – to achieve faster return on investment.

Obviously, there is no single recipe for increasing the resilience of an organization. Instead, there are six dimensions in all areas of the organization that need to be analyzed and – depending on the situation – optimized. These six dimensions were compiled by the Boston Consulting Group and outlined in this excellent article.?Let me give you the quick tour:

Protect and grow the top line: Rapidly identify and respond to changing customer needs with data-driven marketing, sales, and pricing.

Develop agile operations: React quickly and manage disruptions in supply chain, logistics, facilities, manufacturing, development, and corporate functions.

Enable people: Empower employees to be more productive, collaborate effectively, and stay connected in all circumstances. Adapt with new approaches to talent management and development.

Accelerate data and digital platforms: Increase the modularity and availability of core IT infrastructure and applications. Make insights more accessible to enable data-driven, AI-enabled decisions across silos.

Enhance cybersecurity: Safeguard digital assets and react quickly to security breaches in an increasingly distributed environment.

Strengthen financials: Ensure financial liquidity with an operating expenditure-driven cost model, reduced total cost of ownership, and data-enabled policies to manage cash and working capital.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “where is the best place to start”? In times when both resources and time are scarce, it is certainly important to prioritize. I recommend two questions that help you to tackle the important tasks first:?

What is your resilience ambition? Decide your required level of resilience based on the impact of COVID-19 on your industry and the expected amount of future digital disruption you should prepare for. Determine where to build best-in-class resilience to thrive in the marketplace, using resilience as a differentiating factor.?

And, secondly: Where should you invest to build sustainable resilience? Assess your maturity on all six resilience dimensions to identify gaps between your ambition and your current resilience maturity. Tackle resilience dimensions on which you are exposed, such as vulnerabilities to cyberthreats or scattered data that slows down decisions. Invest to become future-ready on resilience dimensions that are necessary to weather crises and differentiate yourself in the marketplace.

As you by now probably already know, I’m truly convinced that one of the most influential elements of a successful transformation is the right mindset. That is why I reiterate how important it is to not only invest in technology, but also invest in developing the right culture. Encourage and empower your collaborators and yourself to be courageous, open-minded and curious when it comes to assess the above-mentioned dimension and tackle their improvement.?

Please bear in mind, that resilience is only one part of the long-term strengthening of the bottom line. Another key part is innovation and, related to that, collaboration with other players in eco-systems. But that is something I would like to write about some other time...