Building resilience where it matters – across people, processes, and priorities
Operational resilience isn’t just another checkbox on the risk register. It’s the lifeline of your organisation the difference between surviving chaos and folding under pressure. Yet, despite its critical importance, too many organisations treat it as an IT or compliance exercise rather than a core business priority.
Why? Because operational resilience requires more than technology controls or static documentation. It demands honest self-reflection, strong leadership, and a relentless focus on what truly matters.
Here are 10 key steps to achieving Operational Resilience
1. Start with a clear assessment of your current state
Before making any changes, you need to know where you stand. This means assessing your current resilience posture honestly and thoroughly.
Ask questions like:
- What critical services do we currently protect?
- What plans and controls are already in place?
- Where have we experienced disruptions before, and how well did we respond?
- Are there any known cases of disruptions to similar businesses and do we know how well they responded?
- Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined?
This assessment is your baseline. It helps avoid duplication, identifies gaps, and shapes your priorities.
2. Define your operational resilience strategy and governance
Resilience won’t happen without clear ownership and governance. You need a defined strategy that aligns with your business objectives and risk appetite. Equally important is establishing a governance framework – who is accountable, how decisions get made, and how progress is tracked.
In practice, this means appointing a resilience champion ideally someone with enough influence to coordinate across functions and secure resources. For larger organisations, consider champions for each key business area to ensure a wide perspective.
A common mistake is to treat resilience as purely an IT or security responsibility. Instead, it should be a board-level concern, with regular updates and input from across the organisation.
3. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Not all business services are created equal. A solid BIA identifies which services are critical to your organisation’s survival and success. It also prioritises them by impact, such as financial loss, reputational damage, or regulatory consequences.
This step often reveals disconnects between what leadership believes is critical and what security teams believe is the most important. Bridging that gap is vital for focused resilience efforts.
The BIA should also consider dependencies for example, which third-party providers or internal systems support those services. Understanding these interconnections prevents surprises during an incident.
4. Map critical services from end to end
Once you know what matters, dive deeper to map each critical service fully. This includes all components involved – applications, infrastructure, people, suppliers, data flows, and physical assets.
This end-to-end mapping exposes hidden vulnerabilities. For example, a key supplier might be located in a high-risk region, or a particular software component could be unsupported. Identifying these risks upfront allows you to address them before they cause disruption.
5. Measure your current level of resilience through risk assessments
Next, assess the risks associated with each critical service. This includes security threats, operational risks, environmental hazards, and more.
Use relevant KPIs such as recovery time objectives (RTOs), system availability, and incident response times to measure how resilient each service currently is. This data-driven approach helps you focus on the highest priority areas and track improvements over time.
6. Develop and implement risk treatment plans
After identifying gaps and risks, create detailed plans to close them. This means updating or developing business continuity plans, crisis management procedures, and incident response playbooks.
Don’t just focus on documentation. Ensure plans are practical, well-communicated, and integrated across teams. Real resilience comes from people knowing their roles and being prepared to act when disruptions occur.
7. Test, exercise, and validate your plans
Testing is where theory meets reality. Conduct regular exercises that simulate a range of disruption scenarios cyber attacks, natural disasters, supply chain failures, or loss of key personnel.
Involve multiple departments, including IT, security, operations, HR, and communications. Exercises should challenge your teams and systems, exposing weaknesses that might otherwise remain hidden.
Make these exercises uncomfortable. If the exercise is too easy or predictable, it’s missing its point. The goal is to continually learn and improve.
8. Embed continual improvement into your culture
Operational resilience is not a one-time project. It requires ongoing effort. Use lessons from real incidents, tests, and emerging threats to update your plans and controls continuously.
Encourage a culture that sees risk as an opportunity to strengthen the organisation, not just as a threat. This mindset shift is crucial.
Regularly scan the horizon for new risks and trends. Whether it’s advances in AI, evolving cyber threats, or geopolitical changes, staying informed helps you prepare proactively.
9. Find and empower a champion
Resilience needs a passionate advocate who can navigate organisational politics and maintain momentum. This champion should have a seat at the table with senior leadership and be empowered to coordinate across functions.
In large organisations, resilience can’t be owned by one person alone. Establish champions or points of contact in each key department to ensure broad engagement and coverage.
10. Engage leadership and communicate in business terms
Security professionals often struggle to get leadership buy-in because we aren’t talking the same language. To influence decision-makers, you need to translate risks and resilience into business impact language.
Use clear, relevant scenarios to illustrate potential disruptions and their consequences. Highlight how investing in resilience protects revenue, reputation, and compliance.
Leadership support is critical because resilience often requires resources, training, testing and commitment.
Final thoughts – Start small, think big, and never stop
Building operational resilience is hard. It forces you to confront uncomfortable truths and change behaviours. But the alternative – exposure to costly disruptions and damaged reputation is far worse.
Begin with achievable steps, focus relentlessly on what matters most, and build resilience into your organisation’s core.
If you want practical advice on how to kick off or accelerate your resilience programme, please get in touch.