Resilience Reimagined: A Practical Guide for Organisations

With COVID-19, many organisations muddled through the crisis to deliver services. Still, with others, the response was marked by greater cross-functional collaboration and highly participative environments in which people at all levels took and felt personal responsibility for resilience. Many organisations told us that the pandemic accelerated new business initiatives, which previously would have taken years, not months. However, the reactive approach to a crisis has profoundly impacted wellbeing as well as the bottom line. Leaders told us that the next crisis might be very different, and another government bailout may not be forthcoming. Therefore, they will take more responsibility for their resilience and invest in future resilience now. Through our research, including the learnings from the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent strengthening of financial resilience, we found seven practices that make organisations more resilient. In the section that follows, we describe each of these resilience practices and highlight key considerations for leaders. These seven practices are then developed into a new methodology of how to build organisational resilience. Next, we offer a new maturity model to help organisations self-assess their current resilience and chart their improvement journey. Then, we offer some thoughts on the thorny issue of measuring resilience.

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