The Resilient Organization: From Business Resilience down into Operational Resilience
Gone are the years of simplicity in business operations. Exponential growth and change in risks, regulations, globalization, processes, employees, distributed operations, competitive velocity, technology, third parties, and business data make continuity a challenge.
The interconnectedness of risks requires 360° contextual awareness of the organization: from the very top-level strategy down into the bowels of processes and technology. It requires holistic visibility and intelligence of risk in the context of objectives to be resilient.
2020 brought organizations lots of disruption to objectives, operations, and employees. What started with devastating wildfires in Australia moved into a global pandemic that shut down the world and its various borders.
Then, racial tensions and a focus on discrimination led to reevaluating policies and conduct rules within the organization and across relationships. Followed by more wildfires in California, disrupting businesses. And the year concluded with significant political turmoil, controversies, and a security breach in a third-party context for the history books with the SolarWinds breach. Throughout all of this was a risk and economic rollercoaster.
2020 was a year of change
The world of business in 2021 is distributed, dynamic, and disrupted. It is distributed and interconnected across a web of business relationships with stakeholders, clients, and third parties. It is dynamic as business changes day-by-day: processes change, employees change, relationships change, regulations and risks change, and objectives change.
2020 was the poster child for business and third-party disruption, and it rolls into 2021. The ecosystem of business objectives, uncertainty/risk, and integrity requires contextual awareness of operations and risk to achieve resiliency – rather than a dissociated collection of processes and departments. Change in one area has cascading effects that impact the entire ecosystem.
This interconnectedness of risk in the business is driving demand for 360° contextual awareness to be resilient so the organization can reliably achieve objectives, address uncertainty, and act with integrity. Organizations need to see the intricate intersection of objectives, risks, and boundaries across the business.
A new focus on resilience
The elements of distributed, dynamic, and disrupted business are driving significant changes in operational resiliency strategies in organizations in 2021. Firms globally and across industries are . . .
[THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND ON THE MITRATECH BLOG WHERE GRC 20/20’S MICHAEL RASMUSSEN IS A GUEST AUTHOR]