Editorial
Within the span of five years, we have transitioned from a global pandemic to the Great Resignation, social unrest, record inflation, geopolitical tensions and wars, once-in-a-generation technological advances and climate disasters. No wonder resilience has become an in-demand superpower.
In the past, resilience building would happen every few years, after major business transformations or other market-led changes. Today, we’re flexing our resilience muscle every few months, if not every few weeks or days. In fact, the World Economic Forum’s latest Future of Jobs report highlights resilience, flexibility and agility among the top skills for 2025. Leaders who embrace this new reality will not only effectively lead their teams through short-term crises but also create the conditions for profitable, sustainable business growth in an era of perennial disruption.
Resilient organizations drive sustained performance even in volatile environments — and they recover faster from disruptions compared to competitors. According to McKinsey’s research, for example, organizations exhibiting resilient behaviors were better equipped to withstand pandemic-era disruptions.
While the advantages of resilience are clear, embedding it into an organization’s DNA is no easy feat. Every company has a culture, but very few have an intentional culture. To foster resilience, leaders must drive deliberate behavior change at scale. The resilience-building blueprint will differ based on each organization’s unique business context, but the following fundamental elements are essential:
Build a Foundation of Trust
We are experiencing a crisis of trust in the workplace. Between draconian return-to-office mandates and surveillance tactics such as tracking badge swipes and mouse activity, employers are sending a clear message to employees: “We don’t trust you.”
Employees, in turn, reciprocate this distrust, with only a third of employees saying they trust management in their company. However, the most resilient teams operate with a high level of trust, knowing their colleagues and leaders will not abandon them in times of crisis. When turbulence arises, trust acts as the glue that holds teams together, so they can weather the storm collaboratively and emerge stronger on the other end.
Foster Psychological Safety
Resilience is predicated on the ability to bounce back from setbacks. This is impossible if employees are perpetually afraid of experimenting and failing due to a lack of psychological safety. Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the defining factor in high-performing teams. When employees feel safe to take risks and share ideas without fear of retribution, they develop the confidence and adaptability needed to navigate uncertainty.
To observe psychological safety in action, consider the example of Google X, Google’s moonshot innovations arm. Google X embraces failure as part of its strategy. When employees cancel their own projects after identifying a flaw, they are celebrated with standing ovations at All Hands meetings and awarded significant bonuses. This cultural norm sends a powerful message: failure is not a career-ending event but a necessary step toward innovation. Leaders at Google X believe that when a project lead discovers that the reward-risk ratio of a particular project is not as good as that of other projects underway at Google X, both the company and the individual learn something. This collective wisdom means everyone is net better off as a result.
Drive Agility Through Decentralized Decision-Making
Organizations that concentrate decision-making at the top struggle to be agile. Bureaucracy slows response time to changing market dynamics or customer needs, which leaves companies vulnerable to disruption from faster, more agile competitors or new entrants.
Research shows that organizations emphasizing empowering leadership are 2.3 times more likely to use effective leadership to shape organizational actions and 3.4 times more likely to maintain a healthy culture. Take the example of Ritz Carlton. Employees can spend up to $2,000 per incident to resolve guest issues without seeking management approval. This reinforces a customer-oriented mindset, enhances agility and strengthens the brand’s reputation as a leader in hospitality.
Become a Talent Maker, Not Just a Talent Taker
Resilient organizations don’t merely compete for talent; they cultivate it from within. With 50% of HR leaders seeing skills shortages as a top threat to their businesses, future-proofing our talent pipelines will require investments in employee development. Bain refers to this as being a talent maker, not just a talent taker.
Even if talent shortages subside, 44% of workers’ core skills are set to the disrupted within the next five years, and while the half-life of skills averages under five years today, it can drop to as low as 2.5 years for technical skills. This ongoing disruption will necessitate a deliberate focus on reskilling and upskilling.
IKEA serves as a best-in-class example here. As AI-driven customer service bots began handling 47% of customer inquiries, the company reskilled 8,500 customer service agents for new roles as virtual interior design consultants. This forward-thinking move not only safeguarded jobs but also generated a new revenue stream, adding $1.4B in virtual interior design sales. IKEA’s approach underscores a fundamental truth: people and profits are not at odds. Investing in employees can be a competitive advantage that fuels long-term business resilience.
Think Long-Term, Even Under Short-Term Pressure
Resilient organizations don’t simply react to crises; they build systems that prioritize the long-term health of the business. Patagonia offers a compelling example. In 2011, the company ran a bold Black Friday ad in The New York Times with the headline “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” urging consumers to reconsider unnecessary purchases for environmental reasons. Far from deterring customers, the radical transparency reinforced Patagonia’s core values and mission and led to a 30% increase in revenue.
Boeing, on the other hand, serves as a cautionary tale. The company’s decision to prioritize short-term speed over its historical commitment to engineering and quality led to fatal crashes of its 737 MAX. The result was billions of dollars in losses, multiple lawsuits, employee strikes and disengagement, significant decline in stock price and severe erosion of trust in the Boeing brand.
Think Beyond Crisis Response
Building true organizational resilience requires going beyond traditional risk mitigation approaches such as developing a business continuity or disaster recovery plan. Consider trying the following unconventional approaches:
- Crisis Simulation Game Days: Instead of waiting for a crisis to test resilience, create immersive, high-stakes simulations where teams must navigate unexpected challenges. These could be cybersecurity threats, key leader departures or PR disasters.
- Cross-Functional Job Swaps: Encourage leaders to experience other functions or roles to enhance collaboration across teams and help them develop grit by facing new, unfamiliar challenges.
- Postmortems and Premortems: Plan premortems (anticipating and planning for potential points of failure before a project commences) and postmortems (analyzing lessons learned after an initiative concludes) to build collective wisdom.
- Organizational “Grit Index” and Stress Testing: Create an internal assessment that measures team grit, adaptability and ability to manage setbacks. Periodically stress-test key business functions by introducing controlled disruptions (e.g., temporarily restricting resources or restructuring teams).
- Reverse-Engineering Competitor Failures: Rather than simply benchmarking success, analyze high-profile failures in your industry. What went wrong? What would you have done differently? This forensic approach builds foresight and problem-solving capabilities.
Conference
Sep
16
HR Tech Conference Las Vegas 2025
Register
Conference
Oct
27
Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo Orlando 2025
Register
The Resilience Imperative
The world will not slow down. The business landscape will only become more complex and uncertain. Companies that embed resilience into their business models and corporate cultures, rather than treating it as a crisis response function, will be better equipped to navigate the future.
In a quote widely attributed to Peter Drucker, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence itself, but to act with yesterday’s logic.” Now is the time for leaders to ask: Are we building a five-year business or a hundred-year business? The future belongs to those who choose resilience.
Editor's Note: Read more on what it takes to move your business forward during these uncertain times:
- A VUCA Framework for Leadership Clarity in Uncertain Times — Internal misalignment causes companies to fall into reactive cycles, unable to execute effectively, with negative impacts on their profitability.
- Make Skill Agility Your Currency for Success — Cultivate curiosity, navigate risk and other strategies to stay agile.
- How to Build a Thriving Workforce in 2025 — A motivated, productive and engaged workforce can be yours if you focus on these six areas.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
