By Peter Power, FBCI
The current business landscape seems forever characterised by turbulence. Organizations great and small are trying to adapt at speed to rapid changes and evolving customer expectations. Add to these a highly unstable geopolitical environment and an ever-developing cyberattack threat landscape, and it is clear why resilience and innovation are organizational imperatives. In a world of corporate Darwinism, organizations that are most adaptive to change are able to cope better: or, indeed, prosper in many cases. So, what do such organizations have in common that others don’t?
Along with organizational resilience (which includes crisis and business continuity management) I suggest that one ingredient that stands out amongst the others is agility, summarised as the ability to adapt rapidly to threats, risks, and opportunities. These can come from any direction, including the marketplace, stakeholder interests, and technological advancements. Agility is easy to say, but seldom as easy to apply. Therefore, it’s worth looking at the positive upside of adopting such a mindset:
- The speed and volume of change call for unprecedented agility in thought and action; a subtle blend of strategic confidence to focus on long-term vision and tactical energy to grasp reality and take action. This means flexing to changing priorities and building a learning culture, where mistakes are recognised as learning opportunities for a better future.
- Coupled to the above, we must stop spending so much misguided time propping up outdated blame cultures. So very often, the misplaced removal of a blamed individual in the hope of restoring efficiency makes no difference to negative cultures.
- The environment, social, and governance (ESG) framework is a very useful measuring tool to assess organizational influence in these areas. According to the UK CBI, two-thirds of investors take ESG factors into account when investing in a company. Are we alert enough to tick all of these boxes – and sufficiently agile to maintain those standards in an uncertain world?
- Rapid progress in areas such as AI, renewable energy, and biotechnology offers solutions to some of our most pressing problems, provided we have the focus and agility to absorb them.
- The conventional boundaries on how we previously understood and responded to crisis, business continuity, and risk management, in what I call the resilience mix, need to be re-energised by more dynamic and agile leadership styles across entire organizations. There’s a need to move from ‘slow time’ thinking to ‘quick time’ doing.
As we come to the final third of 2025 and start looking ahead to 2026, one thing is very clear: corporate agility is needed as never before.
The author
Peter Power FBCI FIRM BA JP has considerable hands-on experience of real time events and for many years has supported various governments and organizations in several different countries. He occasionally appears on TV and radio as an expert guest. He is also a past member of the UK Security Review Commission (IPPR) and previous Chairman of the World Conference on Disaster Management. Peter is a co-author of the UK Cabinet Office / BSI standard on Crisis Management (BS11200) and in an earlier life was instrumental in helping to create/promulgate the UK ‘Gold/Silver/Bronze’ Crisis Command System. He is quoted in the UK Government Guide on Integrated Emergency Management and is the author of many guidebooks, including the original UK Govt. (then DTI) issued guidebook on business continuity. Nowadays his focus is very much on promoting organizational resilience.
Peter is an Editorial Advisor for Resilience Forward.
