Enterprise resilience is the ability to thrive in the face of change – whether that’s a sudden, unexpected disruption (such as the pandemic) or a long-term issue. Dave Stainback and Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles, co-leaders of PwC's Global Centre for Crisis & Resilience, talk to Kristin Rivera about the importance of building resilience and steps organisations can take now to get on their way.
Enterprise resilience is the ability to thrive in the face of change – whether that’s a sudden, unexpected disruption (such as the pandemic) or a long-term issue. Dave Stainback and Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles, co-leaders of PwC's Global Centre for Crisis & Resilience, talk to Kristin Rivera about the importance of building resilience and steps organisations can take now to get on their way.
Kristin Rivera: Welcome to our podcast series, Emerge Stronger Through Disruption. I'm Kristin Rivera, and I'm coming to you today from my home office just outside San Francisco, California. In each episode of the series, for the past two plus years, we've talked with global colleagues about the challenges facing business leaders during disruption.
But today is a very special episode of Emerge Stronger because I'm handing over the reins of the podcast to the new co-leaders of PwC’s Global Center for Crisis and Resilience. So welcome to Dave Stainback from the US.
Dave Stainback: Thanks so much, Kristin.
Kristin Rivera: And Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles from the UK.
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Thanks Kristin, great to be here.
Kristin Rivera: So to mark this occasion, I wanted to start out by getting a bit personal. I'm curious and I'm sure our listeners are as well. How each of you found your passion professionally? I can tell you for me it was looking back at the hundreds of companies I supported during the first two decades of my career as an investigator looking into allegations of fraud, misconduct, and noncompliance.
And with hindsight, when I look back at the companies that I had helped, I could see that they fell into two basic buckets. In the first group were companies who were laser focused on moving forward after an investigation.
Really keen to put the distractions behind them and get back to the business of executing on their strategy. And the second group of companies were those that would respond very much like the first in terms of conducting an investigation and responding to the issue at hand.
But the second group took a step further. They were really keen to understand the root cause of the issue and then to take the actions needed to fix the underlying causes.
And so there came a point in time when I looked back and realized that companies really fell into these two groups and that first group that treated a crisis more like a distraction had a tendency to be buffeted over and over again by issues.
And they often had barely an opportunity to catch their breath and recover before the next one came along. Meanwhile, the companies that were in the second group who took those extra steps seem to have fewer issues over time, and when I looked back, were objectively more successful than their peers.
In short, they were more resilient. So it was for me that epiphany that the actions that you take in the moment really do change your course as a company.
And over time build up resilience, which has a protective effect. So, Bobbie, I'm really curious. What was it for you that drove you to this professionally?
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Thanks Kristin. For me, it was all actually when I first started my career at University, I was due to start a course in public relations at the time. And as part of that course, I on the reading this was a book on crisis management by my resistance and this is about 20 years ago now.
And in the UK, Mike was actually known as the real guru around establishing good practice crisis management because of the support, he had helped primarily the energy sector originally.
And as a result of reading Mike's book, I managed to secure my first internship and then job with Mike himself at a very small boutique at the time called Regester Larkin 03:14.
I really spent a lot of my career getting to grips with how do you help companies plan for and responses some of the most challenging moments of their history.
And over that time, I had the experience to work with organizations during those moments and various things, including offshore incidents, global supply chain, manufacturing issues, litigation, product recalls, all very different types of crises, and most recently ransom ware attacks.
As we know, cyber risk continues to be a key risk. And I think over that time, what this developed into was actually not just helping companies respond and prepare for these crises, but actually right now it's that shifting mindset of building resilience.
Because we know the external world is so disrupted, it will continue to be so disruptive. And one of the key reasons when I reflect back on it, why did I stay in crisis management and resilience?
And actually for me, it's because I get to help people at some of the most challenging moments in their career. And actually, that's a real privilege I've had to do that.
Kristin Rivera: It is definitely a privilege, I agree with you on that one. Dave, how did you get into this?
Dave Stainback: Yeah, thanks Kristin. And this question is great and I've shared this with our global crisis and resilience colleagues in the past because it's somewhat different for a human being to be drawn to crisis.
It's not exactly normal in our genetic makeup yet for some, I think, like Bobbie just articulated, we're drawn more to the fight side of fight or flight, and that's how we end up here.
I'll actually go back a little bit in time before Bobbie, because I think that if all of us looked far enough in the past, we find things even back to childhood that show why we like this type of work.
For me, I grew up in a single parent home as the oldest of three kids from about the age of five or six. So sometimes things got a little hectic and for the longest time I distinctly remember that every day without fail, right as we were walking out to school, there was a mad scramble to find my younger brother's other shoe.
He always had one, but he never had both. And in that daily mayhem, I eventually realized that unlike maybe the rest of my family, I was actually pretty calm in these situations.
And was able to think logically about retracing his steps from the day before and would eventually be the one to find the other shoe, maybe nine times out of ten.
So early on, I became pretty comfortable in disruptive situations. You could call them. Beyond that, I would say that I eventually discovered the building resilience side of our work as after a few long and painful months of the daily fire drill, I got smarter.
And before bed each night, I would go find both my brother's shoes, link them together, and place them by the front door to avoid the next crisis.
Kristin Rivera: I love it. Thank you both for sharing your time with us and your stories. I'm sure that our audience appreciates getting to know both of you a little bit better.
So your mutual passion for crisis and resilience is one of the many reasons that I am just delighted to be passing on to both of you the leadership of PwC’s Global Center for Crisis and Resilience and with it the podcast mic as well.
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Thanks Kristin, I think from our perspective way, Dave and I really excited to take this on. We are at such an interesting point right now. Many of our clients are really trying to work through actually, what does resilience mean to them?
We think what's their approach? How they build resilience within their organizations. Just as I said before, given the increasingly disruptive environment they're in.
And look, it's not about rebadging business continuity. So for me, and for Dave is about how can we bring different views, different perspectives through the podcast to help our clients really think through this.
Importantly thinking how can you actually build and drive strategic approach to enterprise with this, so my hope is that Dave and I can really help our clients tackle this challenge in some way through the future sessions, we will have on the podcast.
Kristin Rivera: It really has been a pleasure over the last two and a half years to have these fascinating conversations with our colleagues all around the world. And I am genuinely looking forward to being a listener as the two of you tackle new topics.
So moving along to today's topic, demystifying enterprise resilience. Before we get into a preview of our 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey, let's take some time to talk about resilience itself.
What we mean by that, it's a buzzword that I think we all hear everywhere at work, I hear it from my kids school, and it's prominent we featured often in shows I stream on TV.
It's used so often that in some ways it's beginning to lose its meaning. And I hate to say it because, as I said earlier, I am really passionate about the power of resilience, both for people and for organizations.
So let's break it down. Bobbie, do you feel like the definition of resilience has evolved during these past few years of seemingly never ending disruption?
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Absolutely and I would agree the word resilience is used in so many different ways. But I think what's important is actually an organization working out what is resilience meaning for itself.
But in its simplest form, you know, from our perspective, enterprise resilience is the ability to thrive in the face of change. And that's whether it's something that's very sudden, unexpected, disruptive event, or if you're dealing with a much more slower burning issue that might have potential reputational operational impacts in the organization.
As one of my colleagues, Alex, often talks about it, is about how do you stop dodging the ropes and actually learn to thrive in the avalanche? Because we know disruption is going to come, it's going to continue.
Actually, when you think about reframing resilience and how you approach it, what we often think about is actually it's not about prevention or probability anymore of a risk materializing.
Actually, your focus and the focus of your executive should really be around the plausibility over risk and the potential impact it might have. We can't always predict what's coming. So yes, we have playbooks and yes, we can do scenario planning, but we can't always predict what's going to happen.
But what recent experience does show us, of course, is that disruptions are likely to be regular. They're going to be significant and likely to be highly impactful in various different ways for organizations.
Kristin Rivera: So, Dave and Bobbie, let's make this real using that reframed definition of resilience. What are the attributes of a truly resilient organization?
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: One of the points I'd make actually is that change in mindset. So a lot of the conversations we're having with our clients right now, particularly the executive board level is actually how do we think about this differently?
How do we think about the problem we're actually trying to solve? And that goes back to the point of saying actually business continuity, (Unintel Phrase) _____ 10:10 to resilience is not the right approach.
Actually, is there a point to say, should an organization relish disruption? Actually, because there's an opportunity in a disruptive event to actually realize competitive advantage, for example.
I think the other really key point is board level engagement, the role of the board in asking the right questions of the executive on how resilient are we, how are we investing, how are we building our resilience for the future to be able to be adapts and be agile in the face of disruption?
It's never been more important and a lot of the questions we're getting is actually what should not exact directors be asking of the exec? And then the cultural events that links back to the mindset. How would you build an organization that's resilient by design?
So that's a phrase that we're seeing come up a lot more frequently now is we know building an organization that's already very well established, very mature, trying to drive a culture resilience by design is very difficult, but there are ways to do that.
And that is, first of all, starts with culture and behaviors. The other part that's really interesting and that's evolving very rapidly is actually had you benchmark, how do you measure resilience?
And importantly, how do you report to the board and the executive and how resilient you are as well? So I think all of those are really important elements when you're trying to work out what does enterprise resilience mean for us as an organization?
Dave Stainback: I would agree and all of those attributes have become exponentially more important during the past several years. Even if you set aside the pandemic, as you said, disruptions are taking up with geopolitical unrest, the rise in ransom ware, climate fueled events and many other things.
The pandemic accelerated and amplified changes that maybe were already underway, but it certainly underscored the need to build a foundation of resilience. If you think about it, resilience enables you to protect what's most important, and that's your corporate strategy.
You spend incredible amounts of effort and money forming and developing and executing on that corporate strategy, but it can so easily be knocked off course by a disruption and so resilience in our view, it provides a deeper understanding of your business, particularly how different people, processes, technologies, third parties really interact in order to execute on that strategy.
And the reality is that Bobbie and I see is that most companies really have not dug deep enough and don't truly understand this, even though it seems so basic. But those that have, they can quickly identify what things are truly critical and place resilience strategies there to protect those things in particular.
And at that point, if you face a disruption, you prove you're ready and can respond quickly and effectively and really emerge stronger from it. Then you gain credibility and you gain trust rather than losing it, like many do in a disruption.
And that trust is with your teams, your customers, your regulators, and many other stakeholders, which can really change the way you're viewed as an organization.
Kristin Rivera: So a truly resilient organization isn't one that just survives disruption. They thrive on it. To use your analogy Bobbie, how do you stop dodging falling rocks and learn to surf the avalanche?
That’s easy to say obviously, and much harder to do. So let's talk about the how? One of the statistics that stood out for me in our 2021 Global Crisis survey was that roughly 70% of business leaders intended or planned to invest in resilience.
Now that was almost two years ago. So I'm really curious to see what this year's survey will show. So Dave, I have a hypothetical for you. Imagine you're sitting in an airport lounge and you bump into an old friend from college.
And she shares the good news that she's recently been named CEO. Now, the bad news is that the company she leads was hit pretty hard by the pandemic, and she's been asked to reverse that downward spiral and transform the culture.
So she's naturally intrigued when you tell her what you do for a living now, and she asks you to share some of your best tips with her. What do you say?
Dave Stainback: Yeah so I remember Kristin talking about this in an earlier episode of the podcast. I think around the time that that 2021 survey launched and really the tactics we recommend are similar today. But the urgency is more pronounced and there are more mature views on where resilience is going as opposed to how it's been done historically. So if you just think about what's changed in the world since the spring of 2021, pandemics and lockdowns and states of emergency have eased.
But we've seen all sorts of new disruptions that are continuing to hit companies around the world. And one of the things, as you alluded to, Bobbie and I have seen a surge in boards asking whether their organizations have the right resilience and response capabilities to survive, what might hit them next.
And a lot of execs, just like my friend in the airport lounge here, are struggling to answer those questions. So we try to break it down into a few simple steps so that you can start to make progress on that journey. So this is what I would tell her.
First elevate resilience to the C-suite. We're seeing this more and more in recent months, and organizations are recognizing that resilience is a foundational, critical part of how you really function in today's disruptive environment.
And it needs to be managed as such. It needs a member of the C-suite who is accountable for it. Secondly, you have to evaluate what you currently have. Evaluate the current resilience capabilities.
Many companies have things, but they've just been developed in pockets or in silos. And so look across those capabilities disaster recovery, business continuity, cyber resilience, crisis management and communications.
Take stock of what you have. Identify the gaps that maybe are there that you need to remediate, but more importantly, set a governance structure that really integrates these disparate capabilities so that you have a true enterprise view of resilience across your company.
And then lastly, number three, I would say be strategic about it, just like everything else in your business. I think one of the biggest learnings that we have had over the past few years is you do not have to be resilient in everything that you do.
If a coffee maker isn't working, the company is likely going to survive. But if you take a strategic operational resilience lens to your company, you can actually look from the top down at the most critical services that your organization must provide to meet your stakeholders needs.
Focus on those, dig into those eight or 12 things and make sure that they're well understood, well mapped out and as resilient as possible.
Kristin Rivera: Bobbie anything to add to Dave’s steps?
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: I think one of the really interesting learnings we've gained from the discussions with our clients around this is actually the whole topic of resilience is really driving organizations to really understand how they operate.
And that goes back to Dave’s point around what are your critical business services? Who is accountable if that service is disrupted and how does it operate and turn across business?
So we've seen a real shift and I think, you know, just to reinforce Dave's point, I think that for me is one of the real focus areas that all sectors should be looking at the moment, but also I think be prepared that you need to have an open discussion at the C-suite and the exact level.
Because actually where we often see resilience programs fail is because they're not integrated. And by its very nature, being resilient does require the silos across organizations to be broken down, as Dave said, you know who actually owns the C-suite.
I think at the moment, you know, we've had references to do we need a chief resilience offset? I'm not sure on there yet because I think actually a number of people might need to have some sort of accountability at the C-suite.
And I suppose the actually who owns it depends often on the industry. Is it regulated, what's the culture of the organization? But I think one of the piece of advice that actually gift to organizations is ultimately all of the C-suite must feel responsible for operational resilience as much as they do financial resilience.
I would also say, you know, just think about where you want to get to. Where are you starting on that resilience journey and what are the outcomes like for you as an organization and making sure that really achievable.
And also helping your C-suite to understand the difference between what we call the first aid kit versus your main system, i.e. the first aid kit being preparing your crisis response plans, having your exercising your training.
That's all needed to be able to respond in the moment to disruption, but actually resilience is about building your immune system to be able to be agile and respond and mitigate the impacts of going into crisis.
So I think looking at it from both perspectives and really talking about it and reinforcing the point that this is not just this continuously. And lastly, I think, remember, it's often not just about your resilience as an organization, it's often about building system level resilience.
So you, your wider industry and sometimes your regulator as well, that system to your resilience, I think, will become more and more important, the more connected organizations are.
Kristin Rivera: Thank you, guys. Those are really insightful tips and advice and just thinking of the companies that I've worked with, they're applicable to just about everybody. So thank you for that.
Finally, in today's conversation, I wanted to take a look ahead to our 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey, which is in the field right now. So if you're a business leader and you have not yet responded to the survey, please take about 15 minutes and add your voice and experience.
You can find it on our GEC, see our website, by the way, if you provide us your contact information while responding, we will send you a personalized benchmarking report which includes feedback and data points and compares you to your peers as well as some personalized recommendations based on your responses.
It also gives you the ability to filter the data by industry and territory. So Bobbie, I know you've had a chance to get a sneak peek at some of the early data. So what are we seeing in the field so far?
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Yeah, so I think one of the really interesting data points is jumping out for us is that so far what we've seen is about 95% of respondents have told us that resilience is a top priority for that organization right now, and that's in the context.
So strategic business priorities and that's a huge number, I think. And that's, I think has shifted from what we've seen previously. And given what we're hearing from clients every day in the conversations Dave and myself and our colleagues are having, I don't expect that to change much.
Actually as the survey results continue to come in. The other interesting one is that actually organizations that are demonstrating they are confident in their resilience are actually more likely to have a CEO as their exact sponsor who's accountable for the enterprise resilience.
And that's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out is the survey crisis and really will be useful to think through when we're talking about who owns, who should be accountable for resilience at the C-suite and how that links to confidence.
Dave Stainback: Yes, I agree, Bobbie, and it has been exciting to see some of the data start coming back. I think one of the other things that we're keenly interested to see is a number of our other anecdotal observations and hypotheses that our teams are seeing with clients every day play out in this large data driven way.
We talked a little bit about confidence right there, but we talk a lot about a resilience confidence gap where leaders display strong confidence and their ability to handle a disruption. But when you actually dig deeper into what resilience capabilities exist, a lot of those fundamental building blocks aren't even there.
And so we think that there's a chance that this data might help those resilience champions within companies to build their internal business cases and really make a change.
In addition, we're also interested to see how broad the surge that we are seeing in the technology enablement of resilience programs plays out across our global responded base.
I think that is a trend that we are definitely seeing and it will be interesting to see how widespread that trend really is across several thousand respondents.
Kristin Rivera: It's super encouraging to see that the global business community is really recognizing how critical resilience is, and it shows that overall as a business community we are emerging stronger from this pandemic.
And I think that is a real silver lining. The survey will be open folks through November 20th, and the report with the full results is scheduled to be released in early March 2023.
So be on the lookout for that. Well, that's a great place to wrap it up. Thank you to Bobbie and Dave for joining me today and for taking the reins of the Global Center for Crisis and Resilience.
And of course, for taking the mic for this podcast Emerge Stronger Through Disruption. Before we break, can you give us a quick sneak peek at the topics that you're considering tackling in your upcoming episodes?
Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Yeah sure Kristin, I think one episode that I'm particularly looking forward to is we're going to be bringing on Claudia van der Heuvel who actually leads our crisis leadership center at PwC.
And it was established to help clients really focus on building their skills to lead effectively under pressure. It's all about crisis leadership, which I'm really passionate about, so I'm really looking forward to, as I said, talent cloud, you're on.
Dave Stainback: And we have a few other ideas that we're batting around too, things around geopolitical unrest and scenario planning that goes along with that, how we're seeing companies do more innovative crisis simulations and exercises.
The cyber threat landscape, obviously, which is always changing technology enablement of resilience programs as we just discussed, there's so many different things that we could cover and we're really looking forward to it.
And of course, we'd love to hear ideas from our listeners as well. For topics that you'd like to hear about, you can certainly reach out to us through the GCC, our website, and we would be happy to put on a podcast for a topic of your choosing.
Kristin Rivera: So again, I am really looking forward to tuning in along with our listeners. And in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe to Emerge Stronger Through Disruption wherever you get your podcasts. And also don't forget to connect with Bobbie, Dave and me on LinkedIn.