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What is Business Resilience?

Business resilience describes an organization's ability to respond and adapt quickly to disruptions or significant, unplanned changes that could threaten its operations, people, assets, brand, or reputation.

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Why is business resilience a priority?

The risk of business disruption is always present. But recent events—namely the global health crisis—have led to a renewed and intensified focus on business resilience for organizations across the globe. Business leaders and IT decision-makers now recognize that the unexpected can happen and should be planned for accordingly.

A prescriptive and reactive approach has long been the foundation of business continuity. But to successfully navigate future disruptions, business leaders will need to adopt a new mindset—one that emphasizes the IT agility needed to achieve business resilience.

What is business resilience vs. business continuity?

Business continuity is the capability of an organization to deliver products and services within acceptable timeframes at predefined capacity during a disruption. A business continuity plan is documented information that guides an organization to respond to a disruption.

Business resilience is an organization's ability to absorb stress, recover critical functionality, and thrive in altered circumstances. In short, it positions organizations to prepare for anything.

Traditionally, business resilience was IT-focused. It meant ensuring that applications and data would remain available and secure during a disruptive event such as a cyber attack—provided the disruption lasted only hours or days and affected facilities or workers in just one region.

Now business resiliency needs to be about more than just protecting a company's IT operations. Organizations must be able to adapt operations in response to continuous change as well as major events and continue to thrive.

Until recently, few businesses had business resilience or business continuity plans for global events that would last for months, result in extended travel shutdowns, and prompt lasting changes to how a company operates and where its employees work. 

Considerations for business resiliency planning

The ability to adapt fast is now a critical measure of success for businesses. Here are some things to consider when an organization creates a plan for developing business resilience.

Business recovery risks

What would happen if the business experienced a disruption or damage that impacted its ability to conduct day-to-day operations for an extended period? Risks can range from supply chain operations and extensive property damage to loss of critical staff.  How will the business ensure continued availability and access to applications and data? What strategies should be implemented and what resources need to be aligned?

Employee safety

Can the business track the health, safety, and availability of both remote and onsite workers in the event of a disaster or major disruption? What safety policies should be in place and how should they be communicated? What training is needed?

When people return to the workplace after a disruptive event, how will the business continue to promote their safety? For example, many organizations are investing in technology to help people maintain social distancing and to conduct contact tracing as the health crisis persists.  

Financial loss mitigation

The longer a business is unable to operate normally, the greater the risk for financial loss. To mitigate that risk, business resilience planning should consider what systems, processes, and people are most essential to mission-critical operations—and outline steps for restoring their functionality as quickly as possible. 

Other considerations

Other questions an organization may want to address:

• What can we do to protect our brand and reputation?
• How can we optimize business decision-making during a crisis?
• How can we maintain our service to customers and partners not only following a disruption, but also in response to changing trends and expectations?

Strategies for building business resilience

These strategies can also help to increase IT agility and deliver an optimum application experience.

Preparing for the future of work

Business resiliency means being able to adapt to gradual but significant change as well as sudden disruptions. This can mean transforming culture, workplaces, and workflows by investing in new collaboration tools and technology.

Cisco Webex vision of the future of work

Increasing cyber resilience

Cyber resilience helps to build business resilience, whether it's understanding how best to secure a remote or hybrid workforce or creating simpler but more effective cybersecurity practices for the organization. 

Future of Secure Remote Work report

Accelerating a multicloud strategy

Using multiple cloud providers for can increase business resilience, allowing organizations to mitigate the risk of downtime and service outages. Moving between cloud services creates agility and makes it possible to scale services up or down depending on need. Organizations can bring new IT infrastructure online in minutes and rapidly provision computing resources to users working from anywhere.

Multicloud networking white paper (PDF)

Planning for IT infrastructure resilience

As part of reimagining and redesigning the workforce and workplace, organizations need to make sure that their IT infrastructure is also resilient. This includes having the ability to provide highly secure virtual desktops to all workers, wherever they are located, and to optimize on-premises and cloud resources continuously to maintain performance and control costs.

Related products and solutions

• Cisco Webex Contact Center
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
• Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer
• AppDynamics Application Performance Management
• ThousandEyes End User Monitoring
• ThousandEyes Endpoint Agents

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• What Is Hybrid Work?
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Center for Business Empowerment

Building a more resilient business

May 22, 2024 | 6 minute read

If there was one overriding lesson for business owners over the past few years, it was to prepare for the unexpected. Staying ready to weather economic disruption and take advantage of new opportunities is not only the key to survival, but also a way to help your business thrive.

“We’re seeing an increase in the frequency and severity of unplanned events like cyber attacks and severe weather,” says Rochelle Clarke, founder of  Continuity Strength , a provider of a digital risk management solution for small businesses. “Successful businesses make risk mitigation a core part of their business strategy so they’re ready for anything.”

Many small business owners recognize the importance of being prepared for the unexpected. In fact, though concerns about a potential recession were down according to respondents to the  2024 Bank of America Business Owner Report , uncertainty around broader macroeconomic factors such as the U.S. political environment, inflation and healthcare costs is tempering plans by small business owners in regards to expanding their businesses, hiring employees and obtaining funding.

How to build resilience into your business

Being ready, willing and able to adapt to change can give your business staying power. Beyond that, being flexible can help you seize new opportunities when others dry up. Here are some ways to stay nimble.

Prepare for an emergency

Make sure you’ve covered the basics of keeping your operations up and running if there’s a sudden emergency. Create a list of emergency contacts as well as a list of bank accounts and individuals who have signatory rights, so you’ll be prepared in the event you’re unable to run the business.

Also, draft a communications plan that covers how to get in touch with key stakeholders and a plan for handling your operations, including the technological aspects. “Having a business continuity plan lets you protect your operations, manage the unpredictable and avoid insurance premium increases resulting from filing a business interruption claim,” says Clarke.

Be ready to pivot

It’s important to consider workarounds if the current way you’re doing business no longer works as well as it once did. For instance, 71% of small business owners have digitally optimized their business over the past 12 months, with 37% of those bolstering their social media presence, 45%  accepting more forms of cashless payments , and 21% adding cybersecurity measures, according to the 2024 Bank of America Business Owner Report.

Other ways to adapt include selling your product or service to new types of customers, expanding into new markets, introducing a new product or service to reflect current market demands, implementing customer engagement tactics or creating a digital version of one of your in-person offerings. (Get a more detailed look at ways to grow your business .)

Set frequently trackable goals

Staying on top of your business’s performance regularly can help you avoid unwelcome surprises. One way to do this is by setting trackable goals on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis — and course-correcting quickly if you’re falling behind. It’s also important to set aside regular time for innovation, whether it’s by testing new marketing approaches or new product development.

How to determine where you need to build more resilience

Every business is different. Doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, using our editable worksheet , can help you identify key areas where your business may benefit from building more resilience.

Many businesses find there are opportunities for improvement in these seven areas:

Financing : Ask yourself regularly if you would be able to seek financing successfully and on short notice. How creditworthy is the business at present? If you don't like the answers to those questions, work on improving your cash flow and credit score . You never know when you may need funds.

In the year ahead, 71% of business owners plan to obtain funding for their business. Of those, 61% plan to use business credit cards. Another 45% will use personal savings, 28% will turn to personal credit cards, and 25% will opt for traditional bank loans, according to the 2024 Bank of America Business Owner Report.

Also, be sure to build an emergency fund . Make a list of your monthly expenses like payroll, rent and taxes, and multiply that amount by three. That is the number of months of overhead you’ll ideally want to have tucked away for a rainy day. If you’ve already opened an emergency fund, make sure to contribute to it regularly.

Marketing and branding : If your business is heavily dependent on in-person sales, consider diversifying into digital and mobile sales channels . Similarly, if you were to lose all of your sales during an internet outage or if there were a change in the terms of service on a platform you rely on, like Amazon, you need to have backup systems in place.

Making sure you are protecting your brand and other intellectual property is also important in an increasingly digital era. An appointment with your attorney to make sure you’ve covered your bases can be a great investment in the future of your business.

Product or service : With more people using social media, customers can post complaints online with the click of a button. Make sure you have systems in place to get input from your customers on your offerings before that happens, whether it’s a suggestion box at your point of sale or an organized way to log input from your front-line employees.

Talent : Staffing can easily become a source of grief for employers who aren’t making a concerted effort to attract and retain talent. About 3.3 million people quit their jobs in March 2024 alone, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And among small business owners surveyed, 44% listed hiring challenges as a top concern, the 2024 Bank of America Business Owner Report found.

Even if you haven’t been hit yet, make no assumptions. Working harder to keep a healthy pipeline of employees and hold on to your team can go a long way. Also look for new avenues to recruit people, whether it’s on social media or through a trade organization or alumni network you belong to.

Operations : In today’s business environment, staying prepared for supply chain disruptions is mission-critical. Search on an ongoing basis for alternate suppliers, shippers, and others who perform critical tasks for your business. It’s better to find them before you need them than to search desperately and make last-minute decisions. And if you have the means, stock up on essential supplies you need to conduct your business to give yourself breathing room if things go awry.

Market : If your business depends heavily on sales in your local market, consider expanding into new markets. For instance, a local retailer could start an e-commerce store and reach new markets by running advertisements on social media.

Environment : Every business should be prepared for local situations such as a hurricane or storm that causes power outages or knocks out the internet. If you run a brick-and-mortar business, also be sure you have plans in place to keep your operations running if you experience flooding or another weather-related disaster.

How key advisors can help you identify areas for improvement

When you’re dealing with complex and fast-changing challenges, you may not know what you don’t know. Your banker ,  accountant and attorney can be valuable members of your advisory team and help you spot solutions and alternatives that aren’t on your radar.

How to build a business culture that fosters resilience

In addition to your advisory team, your employees can help you keep your finger on the pulse of emerging challenges in your business, so you aren't surprised later. Holding daily or weekly “huddles” and regular town halls can help you keep the lines of communication open and strengthen bonds.

Ultimately, no business owner can do it all alone. By unlocking the potential of your team and making the best possible use of the resources you already have, you can position your business to keep growing no matter what the economy does.

Explore more

What is a business emergency fund and does my business need one?

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Getting Business Resilience Right

Five myths stand in the way of allowing a company to hedge against, absorb and recover from the inevitable shocks to its system.

By Dunigan O'Keeffe, Hernan Saenz, Andrew Schwedel, and Thomas Devlin

• January 07, 2021

At a Glance

• The number and magnitude of external shocks have been rising in most industries, yet the fixation on efficiency has made companies more vulnerable to shocks. Now more executives are open to investing in their business resilience.
• Analysis of the Bain Resilience Index shows that while high risk can generate high rewards, more-resilient companies have nearly double the survival rate over the long run.
• Adopting the right resilience strategy requires dispelling five widely held myths.
• Senior leaders will need to acknowledge the trade-offs involved and make choices around their revenue portfolio and their operations. With turbulence likely to intensify, improving resilience can position a company to thrive through the crises to come.

Watch the video summary: Dunigan O'Keeffe, Hernan Saenz and Andrew Schwedel discuss how companies can overcome common misconceptions to put a coherent resilience strategy in place.

Business resilience is all the rage, and no wonder. The Covid-19 pandemic, while horrific on a social and economic level, is just the latest in a long series of convulsions that expose the vulnerabilities or brittle characteristics of unprepared companies. Recent years have brought major shocks, including international trade wars, a plunge in oil prices and a financial crisis―each of which pulled the rug out from exposed companies. An increased march of government interventions have started to limit the options of technology giants as varied as Ant Financial, Google and Huawei.

Now, of course, companies are buffeted by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent economic crash. The pandemic squeezed off critical supplies of drug components from Asia, which exposed the dependency of pharma companies on far-flung supply chains. For more than a decade, pharma companies sought to lower costs by relocating a significant share of their manufacturing capacities to China and India. That directly affected supply chain reliability in 2020, with manufacturing site closures and impaired transportation routes immobilizing supply chains, leading to significant drug shortages in many countries while demand surged.

Resilience clearly has become more important for companies in all sectors. And the turbulence looks set to continue as globalization unwinds, inequality rises, new technological risks emerge, and the effects of climate change manifest themselves more regularly and severely. Yet the dynamics of resilience aren’t always well understood by senior executives and boards of directors. We challenge business leaders to consider the following:

• Most of the things you’ve been worrying about are too short-term and modest.
• Improving resilience doesn’t have to come at the expense of shareholders.
• If you don’t get ahead of the challenge of becoming more resilient, expanding government regulations or restrictions―such as forgoing dividends or stock buybacks in return for bailouts―may further limit your options.

The corrosive fixation on efficiency

How did we land in this predicament? The stability of recent decades enabled the fastest growth in profits since the middle of the 20th century; from 1990 to 2018, the profit pool of companies in developed economies grew at more than double the rate of GDP . Through this period, the relative predictability of the business environment enabled firms to pursue efficiency that helped fuel this exceptional profit growth.

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Yet this focus on efficiency has come at the cost of increasing structural fragility. Firms bulked up on leverage―with US nonfinancial corporate debt-to-GDP ratios rising from around 30% in the 1980s to just shy of 50% today―and used debt to ratchet up cash payouts to shareholders, which in turn have risen from 78% of net income in 1999 to over 100% today. At the same time, many firms consolidated supply chains to drive increased bargaining power, and introduced just-in-time and redundancy-free operations to eliminate waste.

While having a focused portfolio is critical to sustained value creation, it has also created hidden tension points that leave some firms vulnerable to sudden changes in circumstances. Spirit Aerosystems, a leading fuselage manufacturer that depended heavily on one customer, Boeing, experienced this problem when troubles with the 737 Max aircraft forced a major restructuring. Spirit recently took steps to build greater resilience, such as acquiring assets from Bombardier that would help it boost business with Airbus.

Samsung Electronics’ experience, by contrast, illustrates the increasing value of a more balanced revenue and profit portfolio. In 2016, Samsung’s position in the smartphone market was jeopardized when the battery in its new Note 7 product caught fire under certain conditions. The news triggered a $5 billion recall. However, the firm was able to push through the crisis thanks to the breathing space created by offsetting growth in its semiconductor and display panel businesses. The shape of Samsung’s portfolio afforded it the time and investment needed to resolve the root causes of the battery failure and deliver a new flagship product (the Galaxy S8) with a series of innovative features to win back customers.

At a macro level, the fixation on streamlining and efficiency has steadily increased risk. Comparing the periods 1980–1999 with 2000–2018, we found that the volatility of the aggregate profit pool in developed economies increased by 60% (see Figure 1). At the firm level, this volatility is coinciding with a higher probability of failure (see Figure 2). Looking at public US firms, the bankruptcy rate tripled between 1980 and 2018. Both aggregate volatility and business failure rates would have been far higher if not for an unprecedented level of government support.

The profit pool has grown rapidly, but also become more volatile

Business failure rates have risen since 1980.

Banks’ experience after the financial crisis, particularly in Europe, offers a cautionary tale. Prior to the 2008 crash, European banks not only enjoyed rapid growth but also a rising return on equity that reached mid-double digits. Since then, returns have fallen to low single digits and well below the cost of capital. This resulted partly from broader economic malaise in Europe and the continued hangover from bad loans, but also reflects a significant step change in the amount of regulatory capital these firms are now required to hold as the price of government bailouts.

Faced with mounting evidence that the current enterprise risk-management playbook is no longer adequate, senior executives and boards are starting to shift their thinking about resilience. Even those that managed to hustle their way through the pandemic on the back of heroic efforts by employees and partners sense that they need a more sustainable approach.

But here’s the rub: Like the rush to digital everything a few years back, much of the discussion doesn’t really explore what resilience means for each company, and what it will take for a firm to improve. In our recent conversations with business leaders, we’ve come to recognize five stubborn myths that distort the discussion. Dispelling these myths is the first step on the road to resilience.

Myth 1. Resilience eliminates volatility

In current times, the likelihood and consequence of events cannot be forced into a tidy probability distribution. As a case in point, consider how ineffective most polling proved in forecasting recent US elections or the British vote to leave the European Union.

In such an environment, it’s both unrealistic and unhelpful to treat resilience as a trait that will eliminate earnings and share price volatility. Instead, we distinguish volatility― predictable fluctuations in every business over time―from true risk― exposure to a lasting adverse change in trajectory.

In fact, trying to minimize volatility is a bit like buying insurance that protects against the deductible, rather than the loss itself. It misses the bigger objective of ensuring that the inevitable surprises encountered along the way don’t permanently damage a firm’s ability to generate an acceptable return on the capital invested across the cycle.

Rather than focusing on earnings certainty, management teams and boards can more usefully ask what the real risks are that they want to hedge against. Bankruptcy? Default? Rating downgrade? Hostile takeover? Activist investor? Failure to properly define risk appetite is the original sin in many discussions on resilience.

Myth 2. It’s all about the balance sheet

Business leaders often tend to view resilience solely through a balance sheet lens, examining leverage and liquidity, but ignoring other potential sources of fragility. In fact, resilience spans five dimensions:

• strategic , including absolute and relative scale, demand elasticity, revenue and profit diversification and cross-correlations;
• financial , including leverage and liquidity, but also insurance coverage and hedges;
• operational , including operating leverage, supplier concentration and redundancy;
• technological , including availability, workload mobility and cybersecurity; and
• organizational , including crisis preparedness, organizational agility and personal resilience.

Adopting a holistic view of resilience acknowledges the reality that external events typically affect companies through several of these dimensions simultaneously, compounding the extent of the shock. Accounting for all these dimensions allows executives to make smarter choices about where to invest scarce resources in resilience.

Nissan’s experience illustrates the point. Through the 2000s, Nissan took a number of steps to reduce risk. These included developing detailed crisis playbooks with clear disaster-recovery plans and regular simulation training; a more geographically dispersed production base and diversified supply chain than its peers; and proactive steps with suppliers to ensure that they had plans for switching production during a crisis. These preparations paid off handsomely during the 2011 earthquake in Japan, with the automaker returning to production after about two months.

The experience of Southwest Airlines further demonstrates the breadth of factors that contribute to resilience. During the pandemic, the strengths of Southwest’s network, business model and balance sheet have enabled it to expand to new destinations while other airlines are retrenching. This also reflects its disciplined approach to making all customer segments profitable, rather than relying on subsidization from the international and premium business segments, which have been hardest hit throughout the year. The airline’s proactive approach to risk also served it well during the oil price spike in the early 2000s, where actions such as hedging helped avoid the fate of other carriers that filed for bankruptcy restructuring.

In many cases, resilience also stems from the overall simplicity and transparency of the business model. During the 2008 financial crisis, many banks were undone by the sheer complexity and opacity of the mortgage-backed securities they were so heavily exposed to, which made the proper assessment of risk nearly impossible. Likewise, during Covid-19, complex and opaque supply chains have left many firms exposed to shortages of parts or components they hadn’t realized were so critical.

Myth 3. Past resilience guarantees future resilience

Once the dust settles from the Covid-19 crisis, most firms will likely be better prepared to deal with the next pandemic, just as banks are better prepared for the next mortgage crisis. “Black swan” events, however, look different than the crises in recent memory.

Building true resilience demands asking what could happen that would truly test the business, rather than anchoring on recent experience. Many companies that have shown resilience in responding to strategic and financial shocks have suffered from major technology outages―sometimes due to the failure of just one router or server―and cyberattacks. As the trends to digitalize and automate operations accelerate, technology will pose greater risks that some firms haven’t yet prepared for.

Trying to identify and quantify the universe of all possible shocks is a fool’s errand. Instead, thoughtful executives will build the necessary organizational muscles to evaluate which shocks matter most (in both impact and likelihood) based on industry- and firm-specific economics. Although many potential shocks exist, the number of transmission channels through which these could really damage a particular business is much lower. In the airline industry, for instance, this short list would include the price of oil, fleet availability and travel restrictions. Every industry will have a different list, and knowing the critical transmission channels for an individual firm is an essential step in building resilience.

The shape and weighting of risk is particularly heterogeneous. Each firm should understand its unique risk profile, based on its specific cost structure, customer segments, supply chain, route to market, and more. In other words, approach risk like a founder kept awake at night reflecting on the hazards that could destroy his or her life’s work.

Myth 4. Resilience should be handled by the risk function

Too often, risk gets treated as an obligatory but unfortunate box-checking exercise, then relegated to a corner of the business. Accepting this more limited scope, risk functions may fall into the trap of becoming overly tactical and blinkered in their identification of risks.

This approach falls short in a world of greater turbulence. The combinatorial nature of many risks demands that companies identify and mitigate risks for the entire business. A piecemeal buying down of specific risks in specific functions and business units will probably not achieve the resilience needed for the business as a whole (or at least not at an acceptable cost). Moreover, many future risks will emerge from the ecosystem of partners outside the firm, and traditional risk-management functions are ill-suited for this challenge.

Instead, firms will need to elevate and integrate risk into the rhythms and rituals of their most important decision-making processes at the C-suite and board levels. Rather than making decisions based mostly on the upside, and protecting against a few siloed areas of risk, business leaders at all levels should adopt an ownership mindset that fully accounts for how decisions will affect value creation across the business over the long term.

The experience of Swedish bank Handelsbanken suggests a potential model. Founded in 1871, Handelsbanken is the oldest company listed on the Swedish stock exchange, and an exemplar of resilience. During both the Swedish banking crisis of the early 1990s and the 2008 financial crisis, it was the only bank in Sweden that didn’t require government aid. One major factor underlying the bank’s resilience has been its model of empowered local decision making. The business operates with only three management layers―CEO, regional manager and branch manager―and local branch managers have the authority to make most decisions. Instead of receiving bonuses, employees participate in a profit-sharing system in place since 1970, with profits redeemable on retirement. This structure gives staff incentives to make decisions that sustain value over the long term, rather than maximize this year’s earnings.

Myth 5. Resilience doesn’t require difficult trade-offs

Can a firm shield itself against future shocks without compromising earnings today? True, firms will be able to identify no-regret moves that add to resilience without denting current profitability, such as improving supply chain visibility or introducing crisis readiness. And, as noted above, a holistic, firmwide approach to resilience can often improve cost-effectiveness. However, gaining a meaningful edge on resilience will often entail investment and opportunity cost.

Here, business leaders will have to expand the dialogue with investors on balancing short-term and long-term value creation. For their part, many investors are trying to balance the desire for responsible stewardship of capital over the long term with the need to avoid allocating funds to systematic underperformers.

One sticking point in this dialogue concerns disagreement over the right metrics. To that end, we’ve constructed the Bain Resilience Index, a 100-point scale that assesses a company’s resilience based on the statistical relationship between performance during a crisis and a wide range of readily observable metrics including scale, growth, margin, asset intensity, leverage, liquidity, and geographic and product concentration. While these metrics offer only a partial assessment of resilience, understanding one’s relative position on these basic dimensions will serve as a useful start for any fact-based dialogue with investors.

In every industry, there’s a wide range of resilience among individual companies (see Figure 3). The bottom half of the Bain Resilience Index consisted largely of firms that lacked scale and the associated economic advantage. This long tail of smaller firms often struggle during crises as a result of weaker cash flow, less access to capital and limited bargaining power. For smaller firms, achieving resilience without achieving competitive scale is a tall order.

Companies in every industry show a wide variation in their resilience

For larger firms with at least $1 billion of annual revenue, other factors play a greater role, such as debt levels, revenue diversification or choices around asset ownership.  We tracked the shareholder returns of larger firms that remained publicly listed from 2000 through 2019. Those that took on greater risk (with a Bain Resilience Index below 70) tended to underperform in years when the broader economy contracted but outperform in expansionary years (see Figure 4). In aggregate, their higher volatility was compensated through marginally higher returns across the cycle, as an investor would expect. 

Firms with higher risk marginally outperform across the cycle (so long as they stay afloat)

But low-resilience firms pay dearly in another respect, with significantly higher rates of bankruptcy or acquisition. Indeed, over this period high-resilience firms had nearly double the survival rate of their low-resilience counterparts (see Figure 5). In other words, a strategy of higher risk works for those that manage to stay afloat despite the volatility. The question is whether these gains are worth the risk of failure.

More-resilient firms have nearly double the survival rate

Building resilience involves difficult, nuanced trade-offs. In recent decades, many firms found that a strategy of sailing close to the wind generated unquestionable value for shareholders (especially in upturns), provided they steered clear of catastrophic failure. Looking ahead, each firm will have to determine how much to recalibrate and add resilience in order to continue creating value while avoiding the risk of crushing loss.

Getting comfortable with the gray areas

Once you get past these five myths, it’s clear that there’s no single solution or quick fix, no binary black-or-white choices, but rather a series of decisions in the gray areas of marginal risk. Developing the right level and type of resilience demands a combination of long-term vision, a deep understanding of company and industry economics, and a significant dose of creativity.

That said, a straightforward, three-step approach can set the wheels in motion.

• Assess your exposures. Begin with a rigorous, fact-based analysis of the nature and extent of your major vulnerabilities. Use hard data to illuminate what drives profit in your industry and firm. Design benchmarks to better understand your resilience relative to competitors. Use stress-test modeling to delineate the limits of your defenses and ensure that you’ve accounted for second-order effects.
• Agree on your specific appetite for risk. Align the senior executive team and board on a shared understanding of the firm’s resilience track record, and agree on the level of tolerance for risk in the future. Beware of generic, half-hearted exercises that tempt leadership teams to default to an ambition of “moderate” risk. Insist on specific goals informed by answering the hard questions. This will likely require some back and forth with the previous step, and will inevitably land in the gray zone of investments to manage marginal risks.
• Set your game plan and win over investors. Draft a resilience agenda based on a combination of low-hanging fruit and high-gain investments. Bring your investors along on this journey, by recrafting the equity story to demonstrate how the new actions will maximize shareholder value through the economic cycle.

Embarking on the road to resilience does require a commitment from senior leaders and board members, who will need to make difficult choices. They might welcome this endeavor as an opportunity to set themselves up for success. Who believes that the turbulence of recent years will abate? That seems like very long odds. Those who expect continued or greater volatility will be able to take strong countermeasures only if they start preparing now.

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What is Business Resilience? A Complete Overview

Read this blog to understand what Business Resilience is, why it is important, what it includes, how to develop it, and what the guidelines and standards are for ensuring it. In this blog, we will also compare Business Resilience with Business Continuity and answer some frequently asked questions.

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Businesses today face numerous challenges, from natural disasters and cybersecurity threats to economic downturns and global crises. In such a volatile environment, the ability of a company to adapt and withstand these disruptions is crucial. That is what Business Resilience is all about.  

If you want to learn more about it, this blog is for you. In this blog, you will learn what Business Resilience is, why it is so important and how to develop a Resilience plan for your business. 

Table of Contents 

1) Understanding Business Resilience 

2) Importance of Business Resilience 

3) Inclusions in a Business Resilience plan 

4) Steps for developing a Business Resilience plan 

5) Guidelines and standards for ensuring Business Resilience 

6) Difference between Business Resilience & Business Continuity 

7) Conclusion 

Understanding Business Resilience 

Business Resilience is not just about surviving a crisis but also involves anticipating, preventing, and reducing the effects of potential threats. It encompasses all facets of an organisation, including its personnel, procedures, technology, assets, and reputation. Moreover, Business Resilience isn't an isolated event; it's an ongoing journey of learning, enhancement, and innovation. 

Importance of Business Resilience 

From protecting core values to reducing risks, Business Resilience is crucial for many reasons. Let's explore some of them below:  

1) Protecting core values: It helps an organisation to protect its core values, vision, and mission. By maintaining these principles even during times of crisis, a business can uphold its identity and remain true to its founding principles. 

2) Sustaining competitive advantage: Business Resilience allows an organisation to maintain its competitive gain and market share. While competitors may falter during disruptions, resilient businesses can continue to serve their customers, retaining their market position. 

3) Adaptation to changing needs: It enables an organisation to react swiftly and effectively to changing customer needs and expectations. Resilient companies can pivot their strategies and offerings to meet evolving customer demands, ensuring long-term customer satisfaction. 

4) Seizing opportunities: Resilience equips organisations to seize new opportunities and create value, even in the face of adversity. By being agile and adaptable, businesses can identify and capitalise on emerging trends and markets. 

5) Risk reduction: It reduces the risk of various negative outcomes, including financial losses, legal liabilities, operational failures, reputational damage, and the loss of trust and confidence among customers, partners, and stakeholders. 

6) Employee well-being: Business Resilience enhances employees' morale, motivation, and productivity. Employees who feel secure in their workplace are likelier to contribute their best efforts and remain committed to the organisation's success. 

7) Fostering a resilient culture: Resilience promotes a culture of collaboration, creativity, and resilience within an organisation. Employees who are trained in resilience practices can work together effectively to navigate challenges and find innovative solutions. 

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Inclusions in a Business Resilience plan 

A Business Resilience plan is a document that outlines the strategies, actions, and resources that an organisation will use to achieve its Business Resilience objectives. A Business Resilience plan should include the following elements: 

1) Business Impact Analysis (BIA): This involves identifying the organisation's critical functions, processes, and resources and assessing the potential threats and impacts that could affect them. The BIA provides insights into what parts of the business are most vulnerable during disruptions. 

2) Risk assessment: It evaluates the likelihood and severity of the identified threats and impacts, prioritising them based on their potential effect on the organisation's objectives. This helps organisations allocate resources to address the most significant risks first. 

3) Risk mitigation strategy: This strategy defines the measures and controls that will be put in place to prevent, reduce, or transfer risks. It outlines the proactive steps an organisation will take to minimise the impact of potential disruptions. 

4) Business Continuity Plan (BCP): The BCP specifies the procedures and arrangements that will be activated to ensure the continuity of critical functions and processes in the event of a disruption. It outlines the immediate actions to be taken to maintain essential operations. 

5) Crisis Management Plan (CMP): This plan outlines communication and escalation protocols to follow during a crisis. It also specifies the roles and responsibilities of the Crisis Management team. Moreover, it ensures a coordinated response when faced with unexpected events. 

6) Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP): The DRP details the steps and resources that will be utilised to restore the organisation's normal operations after a disruption. It focuses on recovery efforts to get the business back on track. 

7) Testing and review schedule: This schedule defines the frequency and methods for testing and reviewing the Business Resilience plan. It outlines the process for updating and improving the plan using the feedback and lessons learned from simulations and real-life incidents. 

These components together form a comprehensive Business Resilience plan that prepares organisations to face and overcome disruptions effectively. 

Steps for developing a Business Resilience plan 

Business Resilience is completely different from Emotional Resilience. A Business Resilience plan enables organisations to proactively address risks and disruptions effectively. Let's explore the steps involved in developing one: 

1) Establish the plan scope: Begin by defining the Business Resilience plan's scope, objectives, and governance. Assign roles and responsibilities to the stakeholders involved, ensuring clear accountability. 

2) Conduct risk assessment: Perform a thorough BIA and risk assessment. Identify and prioritise critical functions, processes, and resources, as well as potential threats and their impacts on these components. 

3) Develop Risk mitigation strategy: Create a risk mitigation strategy that outlines measures and procedures to prevent, reduce, or recover from identified threats and impacts. Develop a comprehensive BCP specifying how critical functions and processes will be maintained during disruptions. 

4) Create recovery plans: Craft a CMP to define actions and arrangements for effectively managing and resolving crises. Additionally, prepare a DRP detailing the steps and resources necessary to restore normal operations following a disruption. 

5) Test and review the plan: Implement testing and review procedures to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the Business Resilience plan. Find any gaps or weaknesses that require attention. 

6) Update and improve the plan: Continuously enhance the Business Resilience plan based on feedback and lessons learned from testing, review processes, and internal or external environment changes. Ensure that the plan remains adaptive and relevant to evolving circumstances. 

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Guidelines and Standards for ensuring Business Resilience 

In the pursuit of Business Resilience, organisations often turn to established guidelines and standards that serve as beacons of best practices. These guidelines and standards provide organisations with valuable frameworks and best practices to enhance their Business Resilience. Let's explore some of them below: 

1) ISO 22301:2019: This standard outlines the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and improving a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS). It offers a framework for organisations to enhance their resilience against disruptions. 

2) ASIS SPC.1-2009: It is a standard published by ASIS International that provides guidelines for developing and implementing a risk assessment and management program. It focuses on finding and mitigating security risks to protect assets and operations. 

3) ISO 27001:2013: ISO 27001 sets forth the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and improving an Information Security Management System (ISMS). A robust ISMS helps protect critical information assets, contributing to overall Business Resilience. 

4) ISO 22316:2017: It is an international standard that offers guidance on organisational resilience. It provides principles and a framework for enhancing an organisation's ability to anticipate, respond to, and recover from disruptions, whether related to security, operational, or other risks. 

Difference between Business Resilience & Business Continuity 

Business Resilience and Business Continuity are related but distinct concepts. Business Continuity is a subset of Business Resilience. It focuses on ensuring the continuity of an organisation's critical functions and processes during a disruption. Business Resilience, on the other hand, is a broader concept. It entails adapting to change, recovering from disruptions, and ensuring uninterrupted delivery of products and services to stakeholders. 

Conclusion 

We hope you read and understand everything about Business Resilience and its importance. In today's unpredictable business landscape, Business Resilience is not just a luxury; it's a necessity. Organisations can minimise downtime, protect their reputation, and ensure long-term sustainability by anticipating, preparing for, and adapting to disruptions. 

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Frequently Asked Questions

A Business Resilience plan should include risk assessment, business impact analysis, response and recovery strategies, training and testing, and continuous improvement processes.  

Business Resilience is beneficial for organisations of all sizes. While the specific strategies and resources may vary, small businesses can also benefit by identifying risks, developing plans, and building the capacity to withstand disruptions. This will help them thrive in the face of adversity.  

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How To Build Business Resilience

Updated: July 22, 2024

Published: May 26, 2023

Over a half million small businesses fail every year. Of those, roughly 22% are only a year old when they close their doors for the final time. The 50% of businesses that make it past the five-year mark are considered successful. 

The businesses that succeed don’t just have a competitive edge, superior product, or management team with good decision-making skills. In most cases, they are the businesses that faced significant challenges that forced them to adapt, shift their strategies, and grow in new and often unexpected ways. 

In other words, they are the businesses with resilience. 

Unfortunately, 95% of business leaders admit to needing crisis-management-capabilities improvement. If you’re in a similar boat, then your business could be shuttered by the next calamity. 

Business resilience definition

Business resilience refers to a business’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, respond, and adapt to disruptions to maintain continuous operations.

It involves managing risk and responding effectively to unexpected events that could negatively impact operations, such as emerging competitors, natural disasters, cyberattacks, or financial crises.

Business resilience vs. business continuity

Business resilience and business continuity have similar concepts but different focuses.

For instance, business continuity is when an organization can continuously operate, even during challenging times or natural disasters. It involves having plans and procedures in place to keep operations running normally while maintaining exceptional customer service.

For example, a small retailer might stockpile supplies to ensure it can fulfill customer orders and have alternate sources for materials in case of supply chain issues.

Business resilience, on the other hand, goes beyond simply continuing operations during hardships. It involves a company’s ability to adapt and recover from disruptions, ensuring that it can continue to thrive in the long term. Resilient businesses are better equipped to handle unexpected challenges and are more likely to emerge stronger from them. One reason is because they adapt and innovate in the light of adversity.

For example, a business may develop new processes or procedures to manage supply chain issues. It could also create additional sources of income, such as offering online services or new products, to counterbalance any losses caused by the disruption.

Business resilience examples

Covid tested businesses large and small, and only the resilient made it out.

In March 2020, the pandemic shuttered over 3m US businesses during the lockdowns, and roughly 400k closed permanently by June 2020. And guess who fared the worst — the small-business owner.

Those that remained found ways to pivot their operations to stay in business for the long haul. An International Journal of Disaster Reduction survey found 63% of American small businesses switched how they served customers, and 56% changed how they procured supplies. 

Here are a couple of examples of small businesses that were resilient during and after the pandemic:

• Natoli’s Italian Deli in New Jersey pivoted during covid by bringing seats and tables outdoors and selling groceries when everyone stopped ordering sandwiches. The demand for groceries was high, so the owner opened another grocery store across town. 
• Java Game Haus Cafe in Jacksonville pivoted during covid from being a social gathering and event spot to a warehouse-like setup for processing online orders in 2020. This carried them over, and two years later, the husband-and-wife owners are looking to expand. 

But a pandemic isn’t the only challenge that businesses have faced over the years. They’ve also gone through recessions and, in certain areas, natural disasters . Others have dealt with the unexpected departure of a business partner, cybersecurity attacks, and countless other serious issues.

For example, Sally Day, director of Saltoria Marketing, a UK virtual marketing agency, and her then-partner, launched their business in July 2020. Given the nature of the pandemic, the two designed a flexible and agile model to ride the unpredictable waves of the business landscape. 

“We offered multiple packages to suit businesses at whatever point they were at (e.g., one-off projects or monthly retainers),” says Day. “This meant we weren’t restricted by one way of working or charging, and could work with the business's objectives and budget. Our retainers are built to be on/off for maximum flexibility too, so people don’t feel bound to long and expensive contracts.”

The impending cost of living crisis affecting the UK made hiring full-time employees challenging. So instead, they outsourced many tasks to experienced freelancers from various marketing disciplines to build a team. This allowed them to:

• Build a bespoke team for each project/client experience
• Be truly flexible by only paying freelancers for what they do
• Keep costs low and client fees competitive 
• Cherry-pick the best talent for each project
• Not worry about covering staff wages when cash flow is a concern

And just a few months ago, Day’s partner left back to Italy amid Brexit issues, and she now has to deal with solopreneurship for the first time. 

“It’s been nearly two months of solo entrepreneurship, and I’ve found it really tough, but I’m trying to remain positive and excited for the future,” shares Day. 

Since she no longer has an accountability partner, she connects with local marketing consultants to collaborate and feel like a team again. She’s also taking measures to prevent burnout . 

"I’m putting basic boundaries in place around my daily routine, like not working late and saying no to things that don’t truly excite me."

How to build business resilience

Building business resilience involves creating systems and processes that make it easy to respond quickly, effectively, and efficiently to unexpected disruptions. 

According to McKinsey , these are the five ways businesses are building resilience: 

• Creating resilient operations. Companies are redesigning their operations and supply chains to be more flexible and resilient. This includes having global and regional suppliers and cross-training their workforce to manage different areas of the business in the event of workforce shortages. 
• Adopting Industry 4.0. Going digital is an affordable and agile way to maintain productivity and connectivity with each other and customers. Those that haven’t already are digitizing their operations to make them more efficient. 
• Allowing spending transparency. Companies can improve their spending strategies by increasing transparency around capital and expenses. For instance, tech-based methods speed up cost transparency, reducing the effort of performing calculations manually from months to weeks or days. Other digital approaches may include procurement spending analysis, inventory rebalancing, and capital spending diagnostics. 
• Embracing workplace automation and technology. More companies are allowing employees to operate remotely using collaborative tools. Businesses are also using automation to remove repetitive tasks to allow workers to be more efficient. This shift will require training employees to use new technologies. 
• Becoming agile. Fast-changing shifts in consumer demands and industry structures requires businesses to adapt fast. This may include reimagining how you run your operations to bring value to customers. Some examples include rapid product development, customer experience innovation, and digitization.

These are just some of the options businesses can employ to maintain resilience. The key is finding what works for your business and customers so you emerge from challenges stronger and more competitive. 

Steps to create a business resilience plan

Creating a business resilience plan is essential for any organization looking to ensure its long-term success. Here are some tips for creating a comprehensive, effective plan:

• Identify potential risks: Before creating your resilience plan, understand the types of disruptions your business is susceptible to. This might include natural disasters, cyberattacks, supply chain issues, or economic crises. In compiling a list of risks for your business, consider your industry, competition, geography, and any regulations you may be subject to.
• Assess the potential impact of each risk: Once you have identified potential risks, assess the potential impact of each one and prioritize them accordingly. This will help you to create a plan that’s tailored to your organization’s needs.
• Develop a response plan: Create a comprehensive plan for responding to and recovering from disruptive events. This plan should be as detailed as possible, including details such as who’s responsible for each step and what resources are needed.
• Involve all stakeholders in the process: Include all stakeholders, such as employees and investors, in the process to ensure a successful outcome. This way, everyone knows their role in responding to disruptive events.
• Test the plan: Regularly test and practice the plan to ensure it’s up to date and effective. This can be done through drills, simulations, tabletop exercises, and more.
• Review and update the plan: Your business resilience plan should be a living document that’s regularly reviewed and updated. As your business evolves, so will your risks, and your plan should be flexible enough to adapt to these changes.
• Continuously monitor the environment for changes: Monitor external factors such as regulations, technology trends, customer needs, and the competitive landscape to anticipate potential risks.

Once you have a business resilience plan in place, you can focus on monitoring how well it works. 

How to measure business resilience

Measuring business resilience will determine how well your business will stand against whatever life throws its way. To effectively measure your business’s resilience, assess the following areas:

Response time: Monitor how quickly your business detects and responds to disruptions. This includes both internal responses, such as IT security threats, and external responses, such as natural disasters or economic crises. 

Recovery time: Assess how quickly your company recovers from disruptions. This includes restoring services, retrieving data, and returning to normal operations.

Adaptability: Evaluate your organization’s ability to adjust its operations to changing circumstances. This includes adapting processes, adjusting budgets, and responding to new regulations or customer needs.

Risk management: Monitor how well your organization can identify and address risks. If you struggle to manage risks, then there may be gaps to fill or better management processes to put in place.

Financial stability: Evaluate how well your business maintains its financial well-being during a crisis. The ability to generate consistent revenue, maintain cash flow, and manage expenses is critical during unexpected events. 

Supply chain: Evaluate your business’s ability to maintain a stable supply chain during unexpected events. If your suppliers are unreliable, consider adding new or additional options to your network. 

Employee morale: Identify how well your organization retains employees during a crisis event. If it struggles, then it could be that employee morale needs improvement. 

Business resilience is all about how well you can foresee and plan for potential risks. But don’t just plan ahead — practice ahead to keep your workforce on its toes. 

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Downtime can do serious damage to an organization's bottom line and reputation. Business continuity and disaster recovery -- two closely related practices -- help keep an organization running even in the wake of disaster. This guide explains how BCDR works, why you need it and how to build a BCDR plan for your organization to protect it today and into the future.

Business resilience.

• Paul Kirvan

What is business resilience?

Business resilience is the ability of an organization to quickly adapt to disruptions while maintaining continuous business operations and safeguarding people, assets and overall brand equity. Business resilience goes beyond disaster recovery ( DR ) and business continuity by offering post-disaster strategies to avoid costly downtime, shore up vulnerabilities and maintain business operations in the face of additional, unexpected breaches.

Business resilience begins with an understanding that business processes and workflows must be preserved for organizations to survive unexpected events. Among the important challenges of business resilience planning is the human element. People must be prepared and educated on how to respond to a chaotic situation.

A business resilience plan is sometimes referred to as a business continuity plan ( BCP ). Resilience is an outcome of various approaches to readiness, including business continuity, technology DR, crisis management, risk management and incident management.

Business resilience includes various elements of overall resilience, such as organizational resilience, operational resilience, cyber resilience and supply chain resilience. The expansion of the term reflects how important resilience has become to businesses, governments and other organizations.

This article is part of

What is BCDR? Business continuity and disaster recovery guide

• Which also includes:
• 7 top business continuity certifications to consider in 2024
• ITGC audit checklist: 6 controls you need to address
• 12 key points a disaster recovery plan checklist must include

Why is business resilience planning important?

It is no longer sufficient to simply recover business operations and mission-critical applications after a natural disaster, cyber attack or other event. Organizations must be ready to adapt as circumstances change. As the COVID-19 crisis demonstrated, businesses had to quickly adjust to changing work environments that included support of remote work and hybrid setups .

Organizations have a responsibility to remain in business, unless extenuating circumstances -- such as a merger -- make it impossible. Shareholders and other stakeholders expect the business to remain operational despite the chance of a disruptive event hurting the firm.

In many cases, it may not be enough to return to the previous norms; the old ways might not accommodate the way the business now operates. Resilience goes beyond strict business continuity and DR, providing the agility, adaptability and sustainability organizations need to adjust to long-term changes in how they operate.

What should a business resilience plan include?

A business resilience plan includes various elements. Among them are the following:

• business impact analysis
• risk assessment
• risk management
• testing and running exercises
• emergency communications plan
• incident response plan
• emergency management plan

Each of these components can stand alone. However, combined they create a framework from which an overall resilience plan is developed.

The most important aspect of a business resilience plan is to define the end state of the organization following completion of all recovery plan and resumption processes. It's easy to say a business has recovered from an incident once it has resumed operations. But does that mean it's resilient? Ultimately, an organization must determine what its end state should be following an incident. To achieve that, it must determine what constitutes a state of resilience.

Following an event and the completion of response activities, business continuity and DR activities get the business back in operation. However, based on the specific event and how it affects the organization's ability to conduct business, it may be necessary to establish new or modify existing business activities for the new normal. It's this last part where an organization demonstrates it has a resilient business.

Steps for building a business resilience plan

A business resilience plan can be as simple as combining business continuity management, DR and other plans into a business resilience plan. Chances are, many of those activities will be in the resilience plan.

The following are four key steps in a business resilience plan:

• Identify how the organization should function after the event.
• Define how it anticipates the potential for an incident and prepares for it.
• Determine alternate or interim methods of operating the business.
• Identify the effect of the company culture on recovering the business.

The current standards for resilience have no specific frameworks for developing resilience plans. They primarily define the activities that should be part of a holistic plan.

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Check out our business continuity guidance and download a free business continuity plan template that can provide the foundation for a business resilience plan.

Who should be the business resilience manager in an organization?

Determining who should lead business resilience management activities has been a perennial question. Some organizations have standalone business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) departments. Others divide the decision-making and other duties up among business leaders in various groups and departments, such as information technology, legal, human resources, senior management, compliance, risk management, emergency management and facilities management.

In the federal government, resilience-related activities align with two federal standards, Federal Continuity Directive 1 ( FCD 1 ) and Federal Continuity Directive 2 ( FCD 2 ). Achieving compliance with the requirements in these two directives helps federal agencies build continuity of operations plans and achieve a level of resilience. Most federal agencies, especially those in the executive branch, must regularly demonstrate compliance with FCD 1 and 2. Each agency assigns FCD compliance to different departments, but most often administrative units manage them.

Business resilience standards and guidelines

Two standards currently define resilience and establish methods for achieving it. They are the following:

ASIS SPC.1-2009 was developed by ASIS International and dates back to 2009. It is titled Organizational Resilience: Security, Preparedness, and Continuity Management Systems -- Requirements with Guidance for Use . It uses the same management system model that other standards organizations, such as the International Organization for Standardization ( ISO ), use.

ISO 22316:2017 is titled Security and resilience -- Organizational resilience -- Principles and attributes. ISO 22316:2017 uses risk management and other techniques to better identify potential business risks, threats and vulnerabilities before they happen. This standard also embraces the need to focus on company culture as part of an organization's ability to prepare for and prevent disruptive events.

Learn about the five essential areas to pay attention to when building a business resilience plan, including power and system protection, data backup, staffing and cybersecurity.

Continue Reading About business resilience

• Compare and contrast business resilience vs. business continuity
• IT resilience management planning top of mind for DR pros
• Why business resilience management should be high on the agenda
• Best practices for social media and business resilience
• Prepare for the unknown with an organizational resilience model

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Dig deeper on risk management and governance.

business continuity

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6 ways to support business resilience at your organization

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How to Leverage Business Resilience for Growth

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Business resilience can take shape in many ways when you run a company. Entrepreneurs are constantly pushing themselves, taking calculated bets, or doing something that others might call a little crazy, but to them there is no path forward without a little risk and reward. It takes an immense amount of grit and dedication to try new things and bounce back if they don't work out.

For business owners like you, that unwavering dedication to serving customers, being there for your communities, and staying hopeful during difficult times is a priority. For your customers, it's palpable. And it's called business resilience.

Despite potential threats, your optimism and spirit is what keeps you moving forward.  We recently surveyed 1,000 business owners  and found that 61% are optimistic that their companies will do better in 2021. Millennials and minority-owned business owners are the most optimistic, with 75% and 72%, respectively, believing that their businesses will improve this year. What's inspiring is that entrepreneurs like yourself aren't only focused on business continuity, but you're also achieving real business growth through a variety of strategies.

Here’s how you can turn that grit and spirit into actions that can improve your business.

Business resilience vs. business continuity

Business resilience and business continuity planning are connected terms, but there are a few key differences. A business continuity plan spells out how you'll run your company during an unplanned event, like a pandemic, and it's usually created before the event strikes. As a way to help your business with risk management, the plan typically details the potential short- and long-term threats that could impact your business operations and team, along with the processes and recovery strategies needed to overcome them.

The definition of business resilience, on the other hand, is more complex. 

According to  The American Psychological Association (APA) , the characteristics that make a person resilient can be their perspective, resources, and coping strategies. You develop it, you continuously work on it. You already know you will come out of it, maybe not ahead, but with the wisdom that will allow you to keep growing and getting better. 

Resilience is not just an academic term in psychology textbooks. It’s a skill that leads to tangible results, particularly for small business owners. That resilience can lead you to create a business continuity plan, which outlines the recovery strategies your business needs to overcome unexpected challenges.

Developing your business resilience

So how do you develop your resilience, whether it's in the form of a business continuity plan or something else? These days, business resilience planning can look like a few different things:

Changing what your business does

The American Express Entrepreneurial Spirit Trendex found that  76% of businesses have already pivoted , or a change is in motion, while 73% of those that pivoted say they will change what they do again this year. Many businesses are also branching out from what they typically sell, like service businesses offering retail to diversify their revenue streams.

Changing the tools you use

To continue to serve customers, you may need a different set of tools and systems in place. A study from Google and the Connected Commerce Council found that three out of four business owners  are using more digital tools during the pandemic. Among those who use these tools, the majority project less revenue loss and are even 4.5 times more likely to predict an increase in their business revenue.

Rethinking the way customers buy from you

Whether you sell online or take phone orders, one of the systems you may be rethinking while developing your continuity plan is your payment processor.  Card-not-present transactions  allow you to accept payments from customers who aren't physically in front of you, and Square economist Felipe Chacon  says they've climbed more than five times from February to April of 2020  among active Square sellers accepting cash and card transactions.

Starting a business

Entrepreneurs are starting new businesses at record speed, whether it’s in addition to a business that already exists, or a venture that’s completely brand new. Applications for  employer identification numbers (EINs)  were up 77% in Q3 of 2020 compared to Q2, according to the  Census Bureau . They were up 82% compared to Q3 in 2020.

Revisiting your definition of success

The pandemic has also made some people rethink their life path. For Roy Choi, a celebrity chef and founder of  Kogi BBQ , the definition of success is more personal. “A business doesn't have to be what you were told a business is,” says Choi on  My City , a small business entrepreneurship series . “A business can be you, your whole spirit, your whole lifestyle. Because then what you're doing is, you're doing what you love, you're doing it from an honest place, you're touching others with it, and you're making a living. To me, that's success.”

Go back to the reason why you started and see if it matches up with your definition of business success today.

What resilience means to business owners like you

To explore what business resilience looks like, Square talked to eight small business owners from six businesses about where they are and how they got here. The people we spoke with aren't just stepping up to today's challenges, they were  made  for these challenges. 

Iesia Earl of  The T-Shirt Lady & Son  shares what resiliency means for her approach to running a business. “I’m a person that doesn’t give up. If I have breath, if I still have my eyes, if I still have my hands, then I can always come back. So as long as I can be blessed and be grateful for what I have today, I’m sure tomorrow’s going to be better.”

Hear more about how real business owners, like Iesia Earl, are putting these resilience principles into practice to grow their businesses, and themselves. 

Square has the tools to run your business — on your own terms. To help celebrate businesses paving their way forward, we partnered with Forbes on  the Next 1000 initiative  to spotlight bold entrepreneurs and share their most valuable lessons. By sharing firsthand experiences, we're helping businesses celebrate resilience, build skills, and explore what's next.  See how Square works , and  get more expert guidance  for the next era of small business.

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Business resilience

Disruption is inevitable. how will you react.

A crisis has the potential to inflict devastating harm, impacting everything from organisational operations to financial stability and the health and safety of your teams.

How prepared were you when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe? What lessons have you learned and incorporated as you’ve navigated the massive changes of the past year? How can you position your company to weather the next crisis? 

Exploring these questions will help you begin to build the foundation for a state of informed preparedness: the ability to execute an effective response to a crisis , recover , emerge stronger and maintain business resilience.

Strengthen resilience across your enterprise

The more prepared you are to manage disruption, the less destructive and long-lived the crisis will be for your business. 

Incorporating lessons learned and leading global practices and standards, proper resilience planning can help your business withstand disruption and reduce the overall impacts of a crisis. 

In the long term, organisational resilience will strengthen your ability to respond and adapt across four key organisational pillars:

Technology and operational resilience: Sustain your core business functions and maintain the availability of key technology

Workforce resilience: Maintain a productive workforce that’s able to execute on your corporate mission

Data resilience: Maintain integrity and confidentiality of data and continue to meet your resilience and compliance goals

Financial resilience: Retain liquidity and assets

89% of business leaders recognise organisational resilience as an important strategic priority. Source: PwC’s Global Crisis and Resilience Survey 2023

Build long-term resilience so your business can thrive

Too often when a crisis erupts, an organisation’s response is disjointed. Resilience competencies and teams, structured in silos that have been developed over many years, are not aligned. 

So when a significant event occurs, the teams, methods, and technologies aren’t able to function smoothly — and often create more challenges than solutions.

Better equip your organisation to enable a cohesive response by integrating core resilience competencies, such as business continuity , disaster recovery , incident management , physical security , threat intelligence and emergency response . 

Your organisation will gain two key benefits: 

A consistent, enterprise-wide view of events and their significance 

The ability to launch a coordinated effort to respond to disruption

Anticipate. Respond. Sustain.

Enterprise Resilience is PwC’s strategic approach to help you build a flexible operating model that can adapt through disruption. 

Applying our proprietary technology, your organisation can develop the processes and adaptability you need to respond to a crisis effectively and emerge stronger. 

Anticipate and prepare: Maintain a state of informed preparedness in order to forestall compromises of mission critical functions

Respond and recover: Execute response procedures and restore mission critical functions after a major disruption

Withstand: Continue mission critical functions despite a disruption or critical outage, limiting significant impact and curtailing downtime

Sustain: Tap into knowledge from prior disruptive events to enhance your resilience processes and reduce adverse impacts in the future

Building resilience for your long-term success

Understanding how to navigate the volatility of today’s business climate is at the heart of our approach to organisational resilience. 

As a global leader in crisis management, with decades of experience guiding clients through disruption, we’ve honed our processes and tools to help you tackle any event swiftly, efficiently and successfully.

PwC’s Global Centre for Crisis and Resilience  has invested in the development of proprietary crisis assessment and management tools to help our clients understand their current capabilities and prepare to manage crises when they occur. We’ve seen firsthand how real-time, data-driven decision-making can help companies prioritise, detect and track critical issues. And we’ve built our tools aligned with international business continuity standards.

We take a holistic view of the state of your organisation’s business resilience — and as your trusted advisor, we’ll help you weather the storm, emerge stronger and build long-term resilience for the road ahead.

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Business Insights

32 business resilience quotes for staying strong under pressure (2025), september 18, 2024.

Business resilience goes beyond recovery, it is the ability of a business or organization to adapt and still succeed in times of unplanned changes that could potentially be a threat to the brand, reputation, people, or even operations. As many business resilience quotes highlight, resilience goes beyond recovery, it involves proactively identifying potential risks, developing strategies to overcome them, and even turning some challenges into opportunities. 

32 business resilience quotes that will boost your entrepreneurial mind

Here are some quotes to reflect on in times when you are dealing with burnout and need extra motivation:

• “You don’t need to be a genius or a visionary, or even a college graduate for that matter, to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.” – Michael Dell
• “Your success is going to be very dependent on how you adapt.” – Jeremy Stoppelman
• “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.” – Ryan Freitas
• “Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up.” – Mary Holloway
• “When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.” – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam​​
• “It’s in crises that leaders, teams, and organizations are tested. This is when the big questions get asked. Does a practiced disaster recovery plan exist? What about a resilience strategy to respond and bounce back? Are all the systems in place to support work after a disaster?” – Jonathan Reichental
• “Like tiny seeds with potent power to push through tough ground and become mighty trees, we hold innate reserves of unimaginable strength. We are resilient.” – Catherine DeVrye
• “No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience.” – Eric Greitens
• “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.” – Elizabeth Edwards
• “Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” – Steve Maraboli
• “Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” – Gever Tulley
• “Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.” – Sharon Salzberg
• “Resilience is the ability to attack while running away.” – Wes Fessler
• “When we learn how to become resilient, we learn how to embrace the beautifully broad spectrum of the human experience.” – Jaeda Dewalt
• “Resilience is very different than being numb. Resilience means you experience, you feel, you fail, you hurt. You fall. But, you keep going.” – Yasmin Mogahed
• “Successful people demonstrate their resilience through their dedication to making progress every day, even if that progress is marginal.” – Jonathan Mills
• “Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.” – Jean Chatzky
• “Life throws challenges but with patience and resilience, you can convert every challenge into a new opportunity to grow.” – Amit Ray
• “Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.”  – Jean Chatzky
• “Resilience is born by grounding yourself in your own loveliness, hitting notes you thought were way out of your range.” – Gregory Boyle
• “Resilience is built from real hardship and cannot be bought or manufactured.” – Julie Lythcott-Haim
• “The resilient leader recognizes the importance of bouncing back with vigor, not just for themselves but for the health of their organization.” — Deborah Ancona
• “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” — Dieter F. Uchtdorf
• “Resilience is not about how you endure. It’s about how you recharge.” — Shawn Achor
• “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” — Henry Ford
• “Out of difficulties grow miracles.” — Jean de La Bruyère
• “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” — Albert Einstein
• “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” — Japanese Proverb
• “Resilience is built by putting one foot in front of the other. Even when we fear the steps, we take the step.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
• “ Resilience is about being able to look at your situation realistically and say, ‘This is bad, but I have the skills to handle it .” — Selene Kinder

Resilient organizations adapt to the storm, innovate, and find opportunities in the midst of any challenges and obstacles. If you had a chance to read our previous article, many business success quotes mentioned the role of resilience in achieving long-term success.

More must-read stories from Enterprise League:

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• Profitable online education business ideas that you should be aware of.
• Unique and profitable drone business ideas you should be aware of.
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U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $1.4 Million to Support Disaster Resilience and Business Technical Assistance in Puerto Rico

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration is investing $1.4 million in Puerto Rico to support disaster resiliency for small businesses and to provide technical assistance in the awards process.

The EDA investments announced today are:

• Iniciativa Technologica Centro Oriental, Inc., will receive $705,578 to increase disaster resilience for small businesses in Central Puerto Rico through the operation and expansion of a Business Response and Recovery Center. This EDA investment will be matched with $176,395 in local funds and is expected to create 324 jobs, retain 360 jobs, and generate $1.7 million in private investment, according to grantee estimates.
• The University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, will receive $694,127 for a post-awards grant management technical assistance program. This EDA investment will be matched with $118,444 in local funds.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring that Puerto Rico has the resources needed to build sustainable economies following natural disasters,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo . “These awards will support disaster resiliency while promoting long-term economic growth.”

“This transformative initiative in disaster resilience will help safeguard communities and businesses across the archipelago and make strategic investments to strengthen emergency response to future disaster scenarios,” said Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves .  “Thanks to EDA, we’re able to ensure that Puerto Rico’s economy is able to continue its recovery and remain resilient.”  

“The Economic Development Administration works closely with communities to support locally driven disaster recovery and resiliency efforts,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and External Affairs, performing the non-exclusive functions and duties of the Assistant Secretary for Economic Development Cristina Killingsworth . “These projects will increase disaster resilience and provide technical assistance for small businesses, helping to diversify the regional economy and create jobs.”

“I have personally thanked the Biden-Harris Administration for maintaining its commitment to help Puerto Rico recover following the impact of various natural events that have affected the island,” said Governor Pedro Pierluisi . “This allocation of funds by the EDA aimed at the recovery of small businesses after the damages caused by tropical storm Ernesto demonstrates the continuous commitment from both President Biden and Vice President Harris to the 3.2 million U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico. My administration will work in collaboration with the EDA to fulfill the allocation of local funds and make this program available to those in need as soon as possible. I would also like to thank U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and the Deputy Secretary of Economic Development, Cristina Killingsworth, for their prompt action on behalf of the people of Puerto Rico.”

“I am pleased by the latest allocation of $1.4 million made by the Economic Development Administration to support disaster resilience for small businesses and to increase technical assistance in Puerto Rico,” said Representative Jenniffer González-Colón . “These investments will have a direct impact on island residents and will help ensure our communities are better prepared for natural and other disasters moving forward. They will support job creation, economic growth and sustainability, and promote a faster and more efficient recovery following emergency periods.”

These projects are funded under the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2023, which provided EDA with $483 million in additional Economic Adjustment Assistance (EAA) Program funds for disaster relief and recovery for areas that received a major disaster declaration under the  Robert T. Stafford Act  as a result of Hurricanes Ian and Fiona, wildfires, flooding, and other natural disasters occurring in calendar years 2021 and 2022. Please visit EDA’s  Disaster Supplemental webpage  for more information.

About the U.S. Economic Development Administration ( www.eda.gov ) The mission of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) is to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting competitiveness and preparing the nation’s regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. An agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, EDA invests in communities and supports regional collaboration in order to create jobs for U.S. workers, promote American innovation, and accelerate long-term sustainable economic growth.

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Commvault Accelerates Cyber Resilience Capabilities for AWS with Acquisition of Clumio

TINTON FALLS, NJ – September 24, 2024 – Commvault, a leading provider of cyber resilience and data protection solutions for the hybrid cloud, announced it will acquire Clumio, a technology leader in data protection for critical cloud data in AWS.

This transaction enables Commvault to leverage Clumio’s AWS offerings to provide cyber resilience to next generation applications built on AWS. Clumio serves a wide range of customers including Atlassian, Cox Automotive, Duolingo, and LexisNexis.

More and more organizations are relying on Amazon S3 as their de facto storage offering, including for AI development in the cloud. Clumio has brought groundbreaking innovations to market in this area, including technologies that enable customers to have near-instant access to their Amazon S3 data during a time-critical recovery operation.

“In the event of an outage or cyberattack, rapidly getting back to business is paramount to our customers,” said Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani. “Combining Commvault’s industry-leading cyber resilience capabilities with Clumio’s exceptional talent, technology, and AWS expertise advances our recovery offerings, strengthens our platform, and reinforces our position as a leading SaaS provider for cyber resilience.”

“At Clumio, our vision was to build a platform that could scale quickly to protect the world’s largest and most complex data sets, including data lakes, warehouses, and other business-critical data,” said Poojan Kumar, co-founder of Clumio. “Joining hands with Commvault allows us to get our cloud-native offerings to AWS customers on a global scale.”

The asset acquisition is expected to close in early October 2024, and be immediately accretive to ARR and revenue, and accretive to free cash flow within the next three quarters. The purchase price is not material to Commvault and will be funded with cash on hand. Commvault reiterates the fiscal second quarter 2025 earnings guidance previously announced on July 30, 2024.

BofA Securities served as a financial advisor and Hogan Lovells LLP served as legal counsel to Commvault in connection with the transaction.

About Commvault

Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) is the gold standard in cyber resilience, helping more than 100,000 organizations keep data safe and businesses resilient and moving forward. Today, Commvault offers the only cyber resilience platform that combines the best data security and rapid recovery at enterprise scale across any workload, anywhere—at the lowest TCO.

About Clumio

Clumio helps organizations simplify data protection in AWS. Its secure air-gapped SaaS backup solution enables organizations to achieve ransomware protection, backup and restore data in minutes, and gain better visibility to optimize cloud storage costs.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the expected benefits of the acquisition and financial projections, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties affecting Commvault’s business, see “Item 1A. Risk Factors” in our annual report on Form 10-K and “Item 1A. Risk Factors” in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Statements regarding Commvault’s beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future are forward-looking statements, within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results. Commvault does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements.

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Culture and Creativity

Creative Europe in 2025: focus on green and digital transitions, on strengthening social and economic resilience

With a budget of almost €340 million, in 2025 Creative Europe will continue supporting the creative and cultural sectors, including audiovisual. It will build on the achievements of the past four years and integrate further green, digital and social inclusion aspects.

Creative Europe will build on its actions by taking into account developments in the cultural and creative industries, experience in implementation and feedback from dialogue with stakeholders.

Support for the transition of these cultural and creative sectors towards an environmentally sustainable, inclusive and digital future is integrated throughout the three strands of the programme.

In 2025, Creative Europe will have a budget of approximately €338 million to implement its actions.

Priorities in 2025

Support the digital transition.

Through the existing successful support actions, Creative Europe seeks to harness data and digital tools, including artificial intelligence, in the production and distribution of cultural and audiovisual content. 

Sustainability

In line with the EU Green Deal, the Commission will continue to support measures that can be effectively and efficiently introduced in Creative Europe actions to support a sustainable approach to projects’ design and implementation, while respecting the core aims of the programme.

Inclusion and gender equality

The topics of inclusion and gender equality remain at the heart of the Creative Europe Programme in 2025: funded projects must address these issues in their design and implementation phases.

International relations

Creative Europe will continue to reinforce the EU’s international relations. This includes supporting Ukraine following Russia’s war of aggression against the country. The programme will continue supporting Ukrainian artists and cultural operators and displaced Ukrainian population in accessing culture. As of 2025 Ukraine will fully participate in the MEDIA Strand.

Culture strand

In addition to the existing actions in the Culture strand, the European Commission will publish the following new calls in 2025:

• European Cooperation Projects
• Circulation of European Literary Works
• a call to select three consortia to help Ukrainian cultural and creative sectors organisations, artists and culture professionals  tackle the ongoing and future consequences of the war, in cooperation with organisations from other Creative Europe countries
• a call to s elect a consortium of organisations to implement multiple editions of the Day of European Authors
• a call to select a pillar-assessed organisation or organisations to implement the Culture Moves Europe  action
• a call to select an organisation (or a consortium of organisations)   active in the field of heritage tasked with the implementation of a new EU Prize for Jewish Cultural Heritage

MEDIA strand

The 2025 Annual Work Programme maintains and renews existing funding actions whilst integrating some adjustments and updates in line with the legal basis. Funding will focus on three areas:

High quality content, in particular European co-productions, in films, TV series, documentaries, animation, video games and immersive content.

Business development

Business development, including support to film distribution across Europe, strengthening professional skills and talent, developing strategic industry fora and shaping innovative business models.

Reaching wider audiences across Europe, including through a network of European cinemas, pan-European film distribution strategies, film festivals and audience development.

Cross-sectoral strand

Support focuses on the following areas:

A Creative Innovation Lab, for projects addressing several cultural sectors together with audiovisual, to address common challenges such as virtual worlds, intellectual property rights management, data analytics and greening.

Media freedom and pluralism together with journalism partnerships on best industry practices and democratic accountability. The European Board for Media Services will also be funded, in line with the European Media Freedom Act.

Find information about funding opportunities

Potential applicants should regularly visit

• the  European Education and Culture Executive Agency’s website
• the  CulturEU Funding Guide
• Creatives Unite on funding opportunities

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Governor Phil Murphy

ICYMI: Murphy Administration Releases Innovative 2024 Statewide Water Supply Plan to Modernize Water Policy and Enhance Climate Resilience

• Hydrologic Data, Monitoring, Models, and Assessments:  The availability of long-term and real-time hydrologic datasets are critical pieces of information the DEP uses to quantify trends, characterize current conditions, and to build and calibrate models. This information is used to ultimately make informed decisions and to update future water supply plans.
• Climate Change – Water Availability Research and Modeling:  This plan and its recommendations benefit from the availability of sound and reliable climate change science. This science continues to evolve, and the DEP will remain committed to monitoring new developments, with a particularized focus on the regional and local impacts of climate change upon New Jersey and its natural resources. As new and additional climate change data becomes available, it will be utilized to improve DEP water supply models and monitoring methods to more effectively mitigate and manage climate change impacts to water resources.
• Climate Change – Infrastructure Resilience Recommendations:  The DEP develops recommendations and establishes criteria to improve the resilience of water infrastructure and mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change upon the state’s water supply, including through actions to reform relevant DEP policies, protocols, statutes, or regulations pertaining to water infrastructure assessments and modifications.
• Regional and Statewide Water Supply Planning and Protection:  Water supply planning is a critical element to ensure that the state continues to have adequate supplies of acceptable quality to meet all current and future needs, and to balance human uses with ecological needs. Regional and statewide planning is adaptive and evolves as new information becomes available or issues emerge. The plan prioritizes regions of New Jersey where future planning efforts should be focused.
• Water Policy Modernization:  The DEP is obligated and empowered to improve and protect water supply resources and water system infrastructure to ensure water availability and the delivery of safe drinking water to homes and businesses. In some cases, the federal and state laws and regulations that give rise to these obligations are fit for modernization to better position the state and its water providers to confront new and evolving water supply challenges.
• Asset Management and Resilience:  Maintenance and improvement of infrastructure is key to effective and successful water supply management, and critical to ensure the state has access to clean and plentiful drinking water. Proper asset management can reduce water incidents and emergencies, limit disruptions to customers, and reduce long-term costs.
• Policies and Priorities for Efficient Water Use:  The plan identifies key policy priorities for the DEP as it continues to regularly re-evaluate new technologies and research to ensure the responsible and efficient use of the state’s water resources.
• Public Outreach:  DEP is committed to continuing public education and engaging with people and communities it serves on key water supply issues and initiatives.

NEW YORK, NY —  The U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors representing approximately 60 percent of the U.S. economy and 55 percent of the U.S. population, today launched the  Governors’ Climate-Ready Workforce Initiative  to grow career pathways in climate and clean energy fields, strengthen workforce diversity, and jointly train 1 million new registered apprentices by 2035 across the Alliance’s states and territories. Today’s announcement was made at a Climate Week NYC event featuring Alliance co-chairs New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, founding member Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi. “In New York, we’re showing how climate action and economic growth go hand-in-hand,”  said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.  “As a co-chair of the U.S. Climate Alliance, I’m proud to be collaborating with states, industry leaders, labor unions, higher education and community organizations to create the jobs of the future required to build a clean, equitable, and resilient economy. A skilled and well-prepared workforce will drive innovation, create new businesses, and ensure a sustainable, resilient future for our country.” “We need a climate-ready workforce — from EV technicians and heat pump installers to solar panel manufacturers — to meet our carbon reduction goals,”  said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.  “The Executive Order I’m issuing today in conjunction with the Alliance’s new Workforce Initiative will help ensure that workers from all backgrounds have access to the skills and training needed for high-quality, climate-ready jobs across New Mexico.” “We’re aligning our ambitious climate policies with workforce development to have 1 million more workers poised to take these good-paying, union jobs that serve our communities and strengthen our economies,” said Washington Gov. Jay Gov. Inslee. “These are economy-wide jobs, not just in clean energy but building trades, land management, clean technology and more. Climate Alliance states have a track record of meeting our ambitious goals and that momentum continues today.” “Under President Biden and Vice President Harris’s leadership, we are bringing down the barriers to economic opportunity, lowering costs for American families, and catalyzing a renaissance of American-made manufacturing that is creating jobs across America. In fact, just last year, we added over 250,000 new American energy jobs — with clean energy jobs growing twice as fast as the rest of the sector,” said White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi. “Governors across America are at the forefront of our efforts to spur growth in union jobs, expand American energy production, and invest in the economic success of our communities. Today’s announcement will help capitalize on our momentum to create a climate-ready workforce that is rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, communities, and industrial strength.”  The Initiative’s launch comes as historic federal investments, combined with ambitious state climate action, have unleashed a significant expansion of good-paying and union jobs in climate-ready fields — with millions more anticipated in the coming years under the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This includes high-quality jobs not only in clean energy and clean technology sectors — such as wind, solar, electric vehicles, energy efficiency, and batteries — but also in fields associated with climate resilience and natural climate solutions. Under this Initiative, Alliance states and territories will collaborate to collectively support 1 million new workers in completing Registered Apprenticeship programs across the coalition by 2035. These programs, registered with the U.S. Department of Labor or federally approved State Apprenticeship Agencies, provide an especially valuable and proven career pathway, empowering workers to earn while they learn in key climate-ready occupations and industries. Alliance members will also advance a series of collective goals aimed at strengthening and expanding pathways into a wide variety of climate-ready professions critical to building a clean, equitable, and resilient net-zero future. The Initiative’s goals include boosting job quality and ensuring climate-ready employment pathways lead to good-paying, high-quality jobs; expanding opportunities for workers from underrepresented and underserved communities; and promoting the use of stackable and portable credentials in climate-ready fields to build transferable skills, support reskilling and upskilling, and strengthen workers’ economic mobility. A full list of the Initiative’s goals can be found here . Finally, to advance sector-specific strategies, Alliance members will work together through new multi-state cohorts focused on in-demand, climate-ready fields. These cohorts will provide a platform for states and territories to increase collaboration, share evidence-based practices, engage experts and stakeholders, and develop sectoral workforce solutions that can be scaled across the country. Cohorts to be launched in the Initiative’s first year will focus on careers in the following areas:

• Clean Energy, Fuels, and Technologies: Led by Michigan and New Jersey, this cohort will focus on careers in the design, construction, and maintenance of a clean, affordable, and resilient power system; the manufacturing and deployment of zero-emission vehicles and technologies; and the development and distribution of alternative, low-carbon fuels.
• Clean Buildings and Industry: Led by Maine and Massachusetts, this cohort will focus on careers in the engineering, design, construction, retrofitting, maintenance, and operation of buildings and industrial processes that are clean, energy-efficient, healthy, and resilient.
• Resilient Communities and Lands: Led by Arizona and Vermont, this cohort will focus on careers in the development and maintenance of safe, livable, and resilient communities; preparedness for and response to climate impacts such as extreme heat, wildfires, severe storms, flooding, and drought; and the deployment of natural climate solutions and climate-smart stewardship of our lands and waters. 

The Initiative will be led by Alliance  states and territories  with support from the Alliance’s  Secretariat . In implementing the Initiative, Alliance members will customize efforts to meet their individual needs and challenges, while working together to achieve the collective goals. States and territories will also collaborate directly with their workforce development system partners, labor unions, higher education institutions, industry, and other key partners that bring substantial expertise and experience in this work. This Initiative builds on a number of federal-state collaborations between the Alliance’s members and the Biden-Harris Administration, including a White House convening with Alliance governors’ offices in May focused on  creating good-paying jobs and mobilizing a diverse workforce in climate and clean energy . Additional information on the Governors’ Climate-Ready Workforce Initiative can be found here .

The Secret to Building Resilience

by Rob Cross , Karen Dillon and Danna Greenberg

Summary .   

The ability to bounce back from setbacks is often described as the difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Resilience has been shown to positively influence work satisfaction and engagement, as well as overall well-being, and can lower depression levels. But resilience isn’t just a kind of solitary internal “grit” that allows us to bounce back. New research shows that resilience is also heavily enabled by strong relationships and networks. We can nurture and build our resilience through a wide variety of interactions with people in our personal and professional lives. These interactions can help us to alter the magnitude of the challenge we’re facing. They can help crystalize the meaningful purpose in what we are doing or help us see a path forward to overcome a setback — these are the kinds of interactions that motivate us to persist. Are your relationships broad and deep enough to help support you when you hit setbacks? Here’s an exercise to help you think that through.

An anesthesiologist we’ll call Jacob used to describe his job as “90% boredom, 10% horror.” With a few exceptions of challenging surgeries and managing a department of several hundred physicians and nurses, most of the time, Jacob’s role was routine. But that was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Since anesthesiology is not a specialty that can resort to remote “telemedicine,” Jacob and his team entered an overwhelmed hospital day after day. “For two months, I wasn’t sleeping at night,” he shared with us. “I was sending my team into battle with inadequate protection, not even really knowing how many of them might get sick.” The burden of being responsible for both a team he cared deeply about and the lives of a huge volume of patients affected by the pandemic was crushing. Routinely putting in 16-hour days, Jacob was having to determine how and when his team would work in these trying circumstances. “There were nights and weekends when some [colleagues] called me and were crying on the phone. Let’s face it, they were scared for their lives.” And Jacob was, too.

But Jacob didn’t break. He and his team have held together as they continued to do their work throughout the pandemic. So what allowed Jacob to endure this period of extraordinary stress? Resilience.

The ability to bounce back from setbacks is often described as the difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Resilience has been shown to positively influence work satisfaction and engagement , as well as overall well-being , and can lower depression levels. There is even evidence that resilience can help protect us from physical illness . But resilience, conventional thinking assumes, is something we find within ourselves only when we are tested — a kind of solitary internal “grit” that allows those of us who are strong to bounce back.

But that’s not necessarily true. Our research (which is not yet published) shows that resilience is not purely an individual characteristic, but is also heavily enabled by strong relationships and networks. We can nurture and build our resilience through a wide variety of interactions with people in our personal and professional lives. These interactions can help us to shift or push back on work demands and alter the magnitude of the challenge we’re facing. They can help crystalize the meaningful purpose in what we are doing or help us see a path forward to overcome a setback — these are the kinds of interactions that motivate us to persist. People in our support systems can provide empathy or simply help us laugh and bolster our resilience by shifting perspective and reminding us we are not alone in the fight. In short, resilience is not something we need to find deep down inside ourselves: we can actually become more resilient in the process of connecting with others in our most challenging times.

Based on in-depth interviews with 150 leaders (five men and five women from 15 different organizations who were considered to be among their “most successful” leaders), we have defined how connections can help us become more resilient when we encounter major life or professional challenges. A well-developed network of relationships can help us rebound from setbacks by:

• Helping us shift work or manage surges
• Helping us to make sense of people or politics in a given situation
• Helping us find the confidence to push back and self advocate
• Helping us see a path forward
• Providing empathic support so we can release negative emotions
• Helping us to laugh at ourselves and the situation
• Reminding us of the purpose or meaning in our work
• Broadening us as individuals so that we maintain perspective when setbacks happen

As Jacob (who was among those we interviewed) learned in what was unquestionably the toughest period of his entire career, resilience is a team sport.

While, clearly, a portion of Jacob’s fortitude came from personal strength, our discussion with him revealed a number of ways that relationships bolstered his resilience. A patchwork of different people in his network collectively played a critical role in helping Jacob navigate and survive this extraordinary period — each offering a different perspective or helping hand in some way. First, his boss was a continual source of input and validation, boosting Jacob’s confidence as he faced unprecedented medical and leadership challenges. “She always made herself available and these interactions helped me quit worrying endlessly about different decisions.” In addition, he tapped into the strong working relationship he had with another department head to jointly manage surges in workload. The resources he was able to “borrow” from this colleague enabled him to push back on non-essential work, as well as bypass typical bureaucratic gridlock to secure resources. “At a couple of really important junctures, this helped us from getting over-run.” And a very strong chief of staff stepped in and took ownership of several work-streams put in place to help deal with Covid. For Jacob, knowing that this reliable person had those domains in hand “took stress from a 10 to an 8 many times.” Even his daily exchanges with his office manager played a critical role — she was able to find ways to laugh with him even under this stress. “It wasn’t gallows humor, but sarcastic comments about difficult people or situations that lightened things for us and made us feel on the same team,” he recalled.

Jacob was also lucky in that his home was a critical refuge for him through this time. His wife, who also had a medical background, provided an outlet to vent that yielded both empathy and possible solutions. His children even played a role that he did not realize until past the early crisis: “They were proud of me. They would tell me this, and it was better than anything else to help me buckle down and keep pushing through.”

In short, Jacob shows us that resilience is found not just in having a network of supporters, but in truly connecting with them when you need them most. It’s in the actual interactions themselves — the conversations that validate your plans, reframe your perspective on a situation, help you laugh and feel authentic with others, or just encourage you to get back up and try again because the battle is a worthy one — that we become resilient. Yes, we’re all told to build a network to help further our careers, but what’s important to understand is how essential these relationships can also be to our day-to-day emotional well-being — if we are building these relationships in the right way as we progress through our careers. Relationships may be our most undervalued resources.

But such a network won’t materialize overnight. When we talk to people who have shown exceptional resilience, it’s clear that they often have cultivated and maintained authentic connections that come from many parts of their life — not only through work, but through athletic pursuits, volunteer work, civic or religious communities, book or dinner clubs, communities of parents they’ve met through their children, and so on. Interactions in these spheres provide critical “dimensionality”, broadening their identity and “opening the aperture” on how they look at their lives. We become more (or less) resilient through our interactions with others.

Are your relationships broad and deep enough to help support you when you hit setbacks? Here’s an exercise to help you think that through.

Step 1: Identify your top resilience needs .

Below are eight common relational sources of resilience, the same ones we noted above. Our research shows that these sources are not universally or equally important to everyone. For example, some people value laughter, while others prefer empathy. In short, our resilience needs are personal and are shaped by our unique history, personality, and professional/personal context. But collectively, the relationships we develop are a toolbox that we can turn to in our most difficult times, which we can rely upon to help us navigate day-to-day life challenges.

Using the framework below, identify the top three sources of resilience that you would most like to strengthen in your life . Make a note of those that are most important for you to work on developing.

Step 2: Plan how to expand your network .

Reflecting on the top three resilience needs you indicated, place the names of people or groups that you could invest in to further cultivate sources of resilience. Connections that yield resilience can be intentionally cultivated in two ways. First, we can broaden existing relationships by, for example, exploring non-work interests with a teammate or strengthening mutually beneficial relationships with influential work colleagues that help us push back. Second, we can initiate engagement with new groups or people to cultivate important elements of resilience — for example spiritual groups that remind us of our purpose, or affinity groups that allow us to laugh. Broadening our network helps us develop dimensionality in our lives — a rich variety of relationships and connections that help us grow, that can provide perspective on our struggles, and that can offer us a stronger sense of purpose.

These groups may come from any and all walks of life — athletic pursuits, spiritual associations, nonprofit board work, community organizing groups around social, environmental, or political issues, etc. Engaging in nonwork groups (particularly board work, social action, and community organizing groups) helps us develop resilience in our work life as well. Exposure to a diverse group of people allows us to learn different ways of managing, leading, and handling crises, and helps us develop different relational skills such as negotiating with various stakeholders. It also helps us cultivate empathy and perspective that we carry back into our work, among other benefits. In summary, meaningful investment in non-work relationships broadens the toolkit one can rely upon to manage setbacks when they arise.

One critical insight from our interviews is that relying on your network in times of transition matters a great deal. When people told us stories of significant transitions — moves, job losses, role expansions, or family changes — they tended to separate into one of two groups. One group tended to lean into the transition and relied on existing relationships to work through the ambiguity and anxiety they were experiencing. This group also used the transition to reach out to one or two new groups such as a working parents group, a newcomers group, or a work-based coaching circle. In contrast, the second group operated with a mindset that they just needed to absorb the transition and closed in on their circle. They felt overwhelmed and said they would lean into activities when they had time in the future. Over the ensuing 18 months, this group became a smaller version of themselves and often drifted away from the connections that had been so important to their lives.

Covid has created a significant transition for us all. The importance of building and maintaining your connections has never been clearer. For most of us, the challenges and setbacks we are experiencing in work and life during this pandemic have been relentless. But you’re not alone in this battle. You can build resilience. Start by understanding the critical importance of growing, maintaining, and tapping a diverse network to help you ride out the storm.

Support and funding for the research behind this article was received from the Innovation Resource Center for Human Resources.

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