The Benefits of Resilience

Crises can be opportunities for change. Companies have had a unique opportunity and requirement to reassess their business models to establish better systemic resilience with Covid-19, using strategies such as these:

1. Seek opportunity in adversity. Strive to create advantage in adversity by effectively reacting to new circumstances, not just to limit risk or to restore what was in place.
2. Look ahead. Crises can be a great opportunity for accelerating long-term change you may have been considering. Use the situation to your advantage; explore new opportunities and processes instead of just reacting.
3. Take a collaborative, systems-oriented approach. In stable times, business is essentially maximizing performance in a certain setting. Resilience involves seeing how your business’s components react under new circumstances. This requires procedural thinking, and is sustained by employee, vendor, and customer collaboration.
4. Measure more than just performance. Looking backward isn’t the only way to assess your company’s health. Flexibility, adaptation, and other aspects of resilience must all be measured in order to develop long-term strength.
5. Be open to new responses. Resilience is dependent on the ability to produce alternative reactions to stress and the willingness to see things with fresh eyes.
6. Make the change the default. Resilience is about creating organizations and support systems built on continuous change and experimentation, rather than by making minor modifications in extreme circumstances.

For business owners, focusing on performance management is important, but so is structured resilience. It is not only a risk mitigator but also a competitive advantage possibility for businesses who choose to focus on it. Resilient businesses are identified by their long-term performance.