For many, 2024 was a bumpy year in a long succession of bumpy years. Organizations, as a result, are likely starting business resilience programs afresh or upgrading their existing capabilities.
But who should take the lead in that resilience effort? Read on to find out.
What is resilience?
Indeed, we haven’t neglected the fact that organizations kickstarting business resilience or perhaps even retooling an existing program should first come to a consensus on what resilience is.
Well, one definition of resilience we like to use is the ability to deliver outcomes through uncertainty, disruption, and change.
This definition demonstrates the stakes involved in developing a resilience program, specifically that resilience should be the key objective of all protective processes carried out by an organization.
The processes themselves will find homes in the numerous organizational disciplines within the resilience umbrella. Those subdisciplines include:
- Business continuity
- Operational resilience
- Crisis and incident management and communication
- Emergency management and communication
- Risk management
- Third-party risk management
- Security management
- Safety management
What’s more, the definition also underscores the ongoing nature of resilience. In other words, resilience, as a goal, will never be fully achieved. Instead, organizations, through their protective measures (or lack thereof), will either come closer or farther away.
Resilience leadership begins at the top
That’s well and good. But how to start a program?
Here, BCI’s Resilience Framework gives excellent advice. The key guidance distilled: start from the top.
Resilience has to be led by the organization’s top leadership, whether that’s the board, the C-suite, or some other stakeholder (e.g., a political leader in a public organization).
These senior leaders will be responsible for strategic-level decision making while delegating tactical and operational aspects of resilience development to lower levels.
Whoever they are, though, senior leaders need to recognize that resilience is a specific strategic objective. From there, they will define associated strategies and policies to develop, establish, and maintain activities and skills which achieve proportionate, pragmatic, and effective resilience capabilities.
What are other senior leadership responsibilities? According to The Resilience Framework, they include:
Sets the overall direction, vision, purpose, and goals for the organization
Top leadership has the overall view of and responsibility for the organization’s direction, vision, purpose, and goals. It’s, therefore, in the best position to understand and determine where and how resilience fits into the overall organizational picture.
Sets the budgets and resources
Resilience development and management needs financial, human, and technological resources, such as crisis and incident management software, at appropriate levels to achieve the resilience strategies set by the top leadership. The resourcing level needs to be established by top leadership, as they have the overall responsibility for balancing resourcing across the organization.
Has appropriate authority and decision-making power
Top leadership has the authority and decision-making power to make significant strategic choices and commitments on behalf of the organization. They can make the appropriate strategic decisions for resilience development and management and delegate or devolve to the people and units that are empowered to make the necessary operational decisions. Top management can also require and ensure that appropriate organizational departments and teams work together to achieve resilience requirements.
When developing a resilience program, what else does senior leadership need to know? Resilience policy is a big one. To learn more about resilience policy, read our Chief Resilience Officers’ Guide to Resilience Policy Standard, ISO 22336.
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