Is your firm's CEO doubling up as the chief resilience officer?

The CEO sits at the vantaged position of an organisation's strategy, human talent, resources, and its operations. That means that they should be exceptionally positioned to build organisational resilience to shield the enterprise even in the new world of uncertainty, permacrises, geopolitics playouts and disruptions, that have become the new normal and often difficult to predict. To what extent therefore, is your CEO building the needed guard rail resilience muscle to protect, sustain and grow the organisation into the future? McKinsey research highlights that many top leaders and organisations may not be spending adequate time constructing a resilience foundation for the organisations they lead: more than 80 per cent of leaders are reported as feeling less than prepared for future disruptions, with 60 per cent board members saying that their companies may not be ready for the next major situation. It has also been empirically estimated that organisations with a built-in resilience DNA mobilise more swiftly, stabilizing their operations rapidly when disaster strikes. And because of their mental readiness, these organisations also tend to see disruptions as areas of opportunity. Empirical research by this author in 2023 established that the CEO's undivided and laser focused attention on his/her organisation's strategic direction, human talent, core competencies, culture and strategic control greatly enhances their organisation's resilience. The CEO is the organisation's vision and strategic direction executioner. And while time is indeed a scarce commodity, only the CEO has the wholistic perspective to assess the level of resilience of their organisation. They therefore must be deliberate in resilience pro-action; that is, that ability to prepare for, respond to, and take advantage of disruptions, paying particular attention to at least 6 key organisational cornerstones. The cornerstone of strategic direction refers to the broad plans that need to be implemented for the organisation to progress toward its vision, as it delivers on its mission and the fulfilment of its goals and objectives. To create a successful vision of the future, a company needs a clear-minded CEO that can escape the orthodoxies of the organisation's currency to one that can enlarge the window of today's possibilities projected into the future. A robust strategic direction ensures resilience is not just about surviving crises but about thriving in dynamic environments. The second cornerstone: human talent, is the knowledge, attributes, skills, experience, and health of the workforce, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of an individual's total wealth. For organisational resilience, CEOs need to hire, develop and retain employees and make the most of their human talent focus on human capital from the perspective of individual human talent resilience. Resilient human talent traits parameters should be organisationally embedded and celebrated. Human talent is the backbone of organisational resilience, shaping how companies adapt, recover, and thrive amid disruptions. The third cornerstone: core competencies, is an enterprise's collective knowledge about how to coordinate diverse production skills and technologies with resilience, with the purpose of creating and sustaining a competitive advantage. Sustained performance A core competency and resilient CEO works well across organisational boundaries, invests in and willingly shares resources, and thinks about the enterprise's sustained performance, long-term growth and resilience. Core competencies are the foundational strengths that give an organisation a competitive edge, and they play a crucial role in organisational resilience. The fourth cornerstone: organisational culture, consists of common norms, values, and beliefs of individuals within the enterprise. A strong organisational culture can serve as an asset in helping team members accomplish the organisation's goals and objectives towards its survival, healthy performance, growth and resilience. Organisational culture and organisational resilience are therefore deeply intertwined, as culture shapes how an organisation responds to challenges, adapts to change, and sustains its operations under pressure. The fifth cornerstone: organisational strategic controls, refers to the process by which an organisation influences its subunits and teams to behave in ways that lead to the attainment of organisational goals, objectives and resilience. When properly designed, such controls lead to better performance because an organisation is able to execute its strategy better. A focused CEO uses organisational strategic controls to find different methods of strategy implementation by adapting to changing external and internal factors to deliver the firm's strategic goals and objectives, thus ensuring organisational sustainability, growth and resilience. Organisational strategic controls help enterprises to monitor, evaluate, and adjust their strategies to ensure alignment with their goals, while resilience enables them to adapt and thrive in the face of disruptions. The sixth cornerstone: external engagement, refers to how the CEO interacts with a diverse set of stakeholders outside the organisation, including investors, customers, regulators, policymakers, and the width and depth of the society that the organisation operates in. This engagement is crucial for shaping public perception, building trust, and ensuring the organisation aligns with external expectations. For the organisation's resilience, the CEO must create an external-stakeholder strategy and platforms that enable them to genuinely engage with a wide range of stakeholders and with a focus on organisational purpose and why it exists. The increasingly complex world, the relentless pace of change, marked by unexpected crises and volatility, is deeply affecting organisations' ability to survival in the future. It's no longer enough to simply react, organisational leadership must proactively build resilience and adaptability in their systems. For effective organisational resilience, high performing CEOs must have the ability, capacity and foresight to keep 'one eye in the microscope and the other in the telescope' mindset. The writer is an expert in leadership

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