The number and intensity of crises will continue to increase: The pandemic is only just picking up speed again. Weather disasters, stress in health care systems, energy and financial markets will increase further. Global trade will change dramatically. Further armed conflicts are to be expected. The most important application of new technologies such as AI technologies will likely shift to combat. There will be cyber attacks with devastating consequences. Neglected infrastructures can come to their knees for other reasons. The year 2024 will also be highly emotional due to numerous elections around the world. Grief, anger, hate and fear will become even more deeply rooted in societies.
At the moment, the global situation may only affect certain groups and companies. However, the numerous interdependencies of the global economy can trigger chain reactions that may harm the uninvolved and unprepared.
What is it that you can do for your company?
10 actionable tips for resilience
1. Understand how your company works. Know the interdependencies. Understand its vulnerabilities, e.g. to climatic, geopolitical and (geo)economic factors and impacts that you cannot control. Knowledge helps to identify risks.
2. Implement an effective risk management. An immediate response to risks with significant disruptive potential must be enabled. Avoidable risks with significant consequences should not be taken, no matter how unlikely they may seem now.
3. Prepare your workforce for hard times ahead, create and coordinate contingency plans. Identify key roles, train employees, employ experts. Inflexibility from the inside is a disadvantage when an immediate response is required.
4. Talk to your business partners and coordinate contingency plans. Supply chain due diligence goes far beyond legal supply chain due diligence obligations. In an interconnected economy, functionality of collaboration must be ensured.
5. Know your contractual vulnerabilities. Check your contractual relationships for weak points. Renegotiate or terminate contracts if necessary. Build contractual resilience. Now. Do not wait for a dispute to arise.
6. CRM will be more important than marketing. Marketing will suffer from the shift in attention towards crises and disasters. Customer relationships will have to be cultivated more than usual. Reliability and willingness to cooperate will be key.
7. Resilience means flexibility based on knowledge. Check your company’s options for production conversion at short notice. Get familiar with war economy. Learn from the past. If you do not have the knowledge available, get it.
8. Review your PR and social media strategy. Statements made by companies and/or employees increasingly require careful scrutiny with regard to their potential impact. Legally okay may still be (politically) undesirable.
9. Smart digitalization may mean having paper backup. Do you have a resilient strategy that ensures business continuity in the event of a cyberattack? Hasty digitalization efforts in recent pandemic years however might have reduced your security.
10. Make sure you are up to date with world developments. Even though the amount of information has become massive and difficult to digest, find ways to do so. You need to turn current data into actionable data. No, AI won’t solve this.
There is no shortcut to the future
This is a long and yet far too short list of tips. Although kept general, each tip needs adaption to individual circumstances. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The most important thing is to get started.
Claudia will be happy to assist you.