With the uncertainty of today’s world, organizations need business resilience if they want to act, respond and survive (and thrive) in the face of many challenges. But while 97% of business executives believe business resilience is important, only 47% believe their organization is resilient, according to a new SAS poll.
Business stability is important for companies, but it is also critical to supply chains and countries—and to the employees who depend on their organizations for a living.
There are ways to improve business resilience though – and they are both pragmatic and urgent.
Business Stability and Risks
What is the strength of the business? It is both simple and complex—easy to understand and difficult to implement. Business resilience is essential for organizations to anticipate disruptions and quickly respond and adapt so they can ensure continuity of operations and protect their talent, their assets and their brand.
Strong business resilience includes the ability to assess strengths and weaknesses, identify risks and have systems in place to respond and recover. And business resilience is wide-ranging—including everything from plans to shift work methods or suppliers to managing social media or protecting employees in a devastated region.
Broad concerns
In addition to data about how many executives believe business sustainability is important (97%), and how few believe their organization is sustainable (47%), the new poll from SAS—covering 12 countries and nearly 2,500 executives—found only 36% believe their country’s economy is strong.
In addition, executives are concerned about a variety of factors from driving digital transformation (53%), inflation and economic challenges (52%), talent attraction and retention (51%), practices in continuity ((51%), reaching customers across channels (50%), changes in customer demand (50%) and supply chain issues (49%).
The answers to the age-old question of “what keeps you up at night,” definitely point to executives who need to sleep less.
Improving Business Resilience
So how can companies build and maintain business resilience?
#1 – Planning On turmoil
First, business leaders can plan for disruption. The days of wondering when challenges might occur are gone, and for most organizations, it’s not a question of if, but when disruption will enter their company.
The risk of geopolitical expansion, based on the global uncertainty index. In addition, cyber breaches are increasing and natural disasters are also increasing. Based on the many sources of uncertainty and the increasing possibility of risks – planning the need to respond and respond wisely.
Executives are aware of increasing requirements. In fact, according to a SAS study, 81% of executives feel that the need for business resilience will be greater than ever in 2020. They believe that if they increase business resilience, they also ensure organizational performance (89% of executives. ) and technology functionality (88%). They also believe that business stability can reduce the impact of crises (88%) and increase market share by adapting to market conditions (87%).
At its best, business resilience is not just about responding and persevering, but using challenges or transitions to thrive through the uncertainty a business faces.
#2 – Environmental Planning Scenarios
Business leaders are also wise to plan for potential crises. It is wise to deliberately consider events that affect the organization. Before the pandemic, the think tank, The Institute for the Future ran scenario planning workshops that trained participants on how to anticipate and respond to various crises. Those who thought about and planned for a potential pandemic reported a greater ability to work in the situation when it actually happened.
Organizations can look for signals by paying close attention to all types of news—scanning the landscape and assessing the context for possible clues about what’s going on. And then evaluate their own organizations for capabilities and culture that help ensure quick response.
The characteristics required for strong business resilience vary, but generally include speed and agility, curiosity and innovation, customer focus, backup systems, talent systems and superior data. and intelligence related to all areas of business and its markets.
In the SAS poll, respondents believe that speed and agility are the most important for business stability, ahead of other factors such as curiosity, innovation, fairness and responsibility or culture.
#3 – Plan For Events
To ensure business stability, data is key—understanding what’s coming, how fast and what the consequences are—related to external and internal business factors.
According to the SAS poll, business leaders should pay attention to these sources of internal data: sales data, supply chain data, customer analytics, operational data, website analytics, social media data , inventory data, workforce data. And they should also pay attention to these external data sources: consumer transaction data, industry-specific data, market research data, employment trends, public data, shipping data, government data .
Of course too much data is too much, so businesses need not only the skills of sensing (collecting and reviewing data) but also the skills of making sense of where they bring the form and meaning of the data- moving it from information to actionable insights. guided action. These skills include asking the right questions, synthesizing information and connecting dots in unexpected ways.
#4 – Planning With the organization
All of this leads to the need for organizations to ensure that assessment plans, listening posts and contingency procedures are included throughout the organization. Every department must be ready to react and interact.
When a cyber breach occurs, there is an IT response as well as an HR response, internal communications response, security department response, operations/supply chain response, PR/media response and more. Or when a natural disaster occurs, each regional area affected must respond together with the central functions.
Additionally, organizations are more likely to respond with agility when their talent is also adaptable. Select people with many skills, develop them and give purpose and meaningful work, involve them and motivate them, ensure strong leadership and provide the best work experiences. This will contribute to a team of employees that can effectively pull together when things get tough.
Smart organizations are also able to create partnerships with outside experts and others in the market and community—relying not only on their own perspectives, but examining external goals.
Preparedness involves asking many parts of the organization to provide input about how to respond and respond and embed policies and practices that will ensure they are prepared.
#5 – Advance Planning
Organizations can also consider establishing regular workshops where they involve employees and outside experts in thinking about the future and identifying what will happen. They may consider creating team(s) focused on foresight—regularly researching what will happen next in the organization—and practicing drills for all kinds of events.
The automatic response to a crisis may be to freeze and take no action, or to decide quickly, take the wrong action. But when organizations anticipate and practice, they build the muscle to stay calm, quickly evaluate data, generate insights and decide on the best actions—and then monitor and evaluate to ensure constant improvement as conditions improve.
A Promised Future
The future is uncertain and although it may seem bleak, it probably offers both risk and promise. After all, an unclear path can also be an opportunity for new innovations, strong response and a positive impact.
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