Steve Cotton, Regional Manager, Absolute IT

Absolute IT’s Auckland Regional Manager and long-time TIN contributor, Steve Cotton was joined by Savvy Millennial founder and Forbes 30 under 30 alum, Savannah Peterson, Serko CTO, Duanne O’Brien, JAVLN CEO, Dale Smith, and Fuel50 Vice President, Marija Potter, to discuss building resilience in leaders, teams, and businesses.

Across all sectors and regions around the world, resilience has become both a desirable and necessary trait for leaders, their businesses, and employees. This was already the case prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and is now even more crucial for many organisations. On an individual level, resilience is used to describe the ability to take a knock and recover, but on an organisational level it refers to having the ability to withstand a knock, understand the causation, and have the agility to recover.

Expectedly, resilience has been a key topic in 2020, but it would seem that people tend to overlook the duality of the term. It does not simply refer to the ability to bounce back from a crisis, as typically understood; it also covers the capacity to more forward into a new-found reality.

One thing this pandemic has demonstrated is that, when faced with adversity, teams that are aligned with a common purpose can achieve goals that previously may have been considered unfeasible prior to the crisis. As businesses plan their transition into the new normal, many are seeking to maintain this growing sense of agility and purpose.

This crisis has caused our dependence on technology to become more intense. However, it was not the case that new technology was rapidly created and implemented. Instead, the platforms that were already in use were utilised to a higher capacity. Previous barriers to implementation had to be surpassed as adaptability became a vital business competency, and rapid adoption became the new standard mode of operation. To safeguard business success, businesses need to be sure that their teams are as adaptable, competent, and resilient as their technology stack.

We have found that some industry leaders have been energised by the advancement in headway that the pandemic has forced them to make. Across a variety of sectors, businesses are coming to the realisation that they can aim for more than simply returning to their pre-COVID functions. By taking learnings from the COVID-19 crisis, organisations can strive to create a heightened level of operational resilience and performance.

Establishing resilience at any level is an ongoing learning process. Businesses will be learning from the disruption caused by COVID-19 and will be incorporating their learnings into their next steps. By investing in building resilience across leaders and their teams, businesses will be well-placed to drive towards a successful future.