Having a disaster recovery strategy in place allows you to quickly resume mission-critical functions following a disruption. However, nothing could have truly prepared us for the extensive upheaval the COVID-19 pandemic has caused. Of course, the immediate response to the crisis was to manage liquidity and cashflow, assure customers and negotiate supply chains.
Some industries are more significantly impacted than others. Depending on the degree of structural change the pandemic has imposed and the pace of recovery that is anticipated, some sectors will Surge, while others will need to Modify, Transform, or Reset their business models. Clearly, those industries that are leading or embracing digital transformation have fared the best (see Figure 1.)
However, while there is some lopsidedness to this, in all cases it would be wrong to think that we are in any sort of recovery phase. As difficult as this may be to accept, as long as we do not have a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and herd immunity, and society continues to experience waves of COVID-19 infections, we will remain stuck in a perpetual cycle of Prepare and Respond.
What are you and your team doing to prepare and respond so that you will thrive and grow during the lingering uncertainty, to come out stronger during the recovery phase?
It’s a phenomenon Nassim Taleb calls in his book of the same title, “Antifragile” – the exact opposite of fragile – that is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. It is like building muscle. Are you building muscle?
