Crisis and resilience: Organisations overestimate preparedness for disruption

When it comes to crisis and resilience, organisations and business leaders overestimate their preparedness for disruption, said PwC recently.

According to the company’s bi-annual Global Crisis and Resilience Survey with data from 1,812 respondents worldwide, 89% of respondents indicated that resilience is one of their most important strategic organisational priorities.

After a tumultuous start to the decade, it is unsurprising that nine out of ten (91%) organisations report that they have experienced at least one disruption other than the Covid-19 pandemic, PwC noted. 

On average, organisations experienced three-and-half disruptions in the last two years, the firm added. 

Survey highlights

• 76% said their most serious disruption had a medium-to-high impact on operations — disrupting critical business processes and services and causing downstream financial and reputational issues.
• The top five reported disruptions include: the global Covid-19 pandemic, employee retention and recruitment, supply chain, technology disruption or failure, and cyber attack. 
• Excluding the pandemic, supply chain disruptions had the greatest impact on organisations – monetary or otherwise – and they have doubled since 2019, according to the report. 
• More than half (60%) of organisations whose most serious disruption was supply chain related, were most concerned about experiencing a similar disruption again.
• While 70% of business leaders express confidence in their ability to recover from various disruptions, the survey data shows that many organisations lack the foundational elements of resilience they need to be successful. 
• This confidence gap puts organisations at risk of being exposed — particularly when the disruption spotlight is solely on them — as opposed to broader global or sector challenges.
  

Crisis and resilience: Major trends
In addition, the survey data revealed three significant trends driving, what PwC has called, a resilience revolution.

Integration: An integrated resilience programme is essential for today’s organisations. It is no longer sufficient for organisations to work in silos as they address today’s complex and interconnected risks. 

Businesses are actively moving to an integrated approach to resilience, centrally governing and aligning multiple resilience capabilities around protecting what matters most and embedding the programme into operations and the corporate culture.

Leadership: Thriving in permacrisis requires an executive leader and upskilled teams. A successful resilience strategy and programme needs: (1) executive sponsorship from the C-suite, (2) a programme leader with clear responsibility, and (3) a skilled team to do the day-to-day work.

Programme approach: Building operational resilience around what matters most. 

Organisations must build operational resilience (OpRes) and ensure that enterprise planning and preparation are part of a broader continuous cycle. 

As more businesses integrate their resilience programmes, many are adopting the core principles of an OpRes approach, focusing on protecting what matters most and prioritising investment based on what’s critical to their organisation and stakeholders. 

This allows organisations to manage risks with high reliability and to drive efficiency.

Those who have moved to an integrated resilience programme are significantly further ahead in many of the core elements of OpRes, including risk and threat assessment processes, exercising and testing, and service and process dependency mapping, enabling companies to build a robust corporate immune system where an organisation can adapt, flex, and move forward stronger.