Across all industries, resilience remains essential for global success and long-term organizational longevity. By the mid 2020s, the COVID-19 pandemic had firmly established resilience as not just important but fundamental to sustained performance. Any major disruption, such as a global health crisis, geopolitical instability, or economic volatility, creates pressure to improve efficiency, performance, and competitive positioning. This external pressure heightens the need for business transformation to secure long-term outcomes and continued success. Resilience has consistently been shown to create durable value, enabling companies to outperform competitors both during crises and in periods of stability.

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Business transformation is a critical aspect of resilience, and yet it is often misunderstood, overlooked, or carried out incorrectly or inefficiently. Yet when a business is successfully transformed, the impact on resilience, long-term performance, and customer retention is undeniable. The impact of a new crisis will be lowered, as the business will be able to mitigate the negative consequences while monopolizing on new opportunities the crisis may create. Additionally, resilient transformation significantly decreases the time taken for a business to recover from a crisis, and the extent of this recovery will be improved to allow the success of the company to grow despite a change in circumstances.

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In the face of uncertainty, transformation is necessary for business success. This transformation consists of changes across multiple areas, including operating models, processes, and organizational culture change. Insights into successful business transformation can be found by examining businesses that have consistently transformed successfully and out-performed peers in the industry. These businesses make up the top percentile of business transformations in terms of percentage increase in industry performance. In an analysis of these businesses, there are several key factors that stand out as being crucial to the success of resilient transformation, as well as demonstrating exactly why transformation is the key to creating resilience.

Resilience provides multi-faceted advantages to businesses in both the short and long term

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Pre-emptive business transformation in the face of crisis or industry volatility offers access to a range of advantages against the competition. Resilience creates the advantage of anticipation of future crises, allowing swift recognition of threats that may impact business in the future. This allows advance preparation before the impact of the crisis is felt, reducing the initial negative impact of the crisis. This “cushioning” effect increases the chance that a business will be minimally affected once a crisis begins, and improves the net recovery speed following the crisis.

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In the time following the initial impact of uncertain or unprecedented times, a resilient business will be influential in re-shaping industry dynamics and taking advantage of new circumstances to reach success. This process increases the extent of recovery and has the potential to allow greater success than would have been accessible pre-crisis.

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It is critical to carry out resilience transformation as soon as possible, whether during a crisis or in anticipation of a future crisis.

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There is undeniable evidence that the likelihood of resilience being built via business transformation drops sharply if these changes are not made early. If transformation is begun immediately when there is a crisis, the chance of increased company debt drops by 20% when compared to a transformation that takes place a year or more following a crisis. Beginning transformation early allows traction to be established early on as changes in the operating model, business strategy, and internal processes are implemented. Additionally, a transformation that takes place a year or more after a crisis is less likely to be growth-oriented. The global environment is dynamic, with significant uncertainty. This points toward significant benefits for businesses from planning for crisis and pre-emptive resilience transformation. Resilience creates a wide range of benefits across the global economic cycle in both the short and long term.

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Resilience is equally important in times of crisis, and in times of stability.

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In times when the pressure of a crisis is removed, focus on resilience may be seen as unnecessary by organization leaders. Even a company that has successfully implemented transformation for resilience in a past crisis may shift the focus away from this change when stability increases. There is undeniable evidence that the likelihood of resilience being built via business transformation drops sharply if these changes are not made early.

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Neglecting resilience once a crisis has been resolved results in the value of the resilient transformation decreasing, making the transformation less likely to reduce debt and accelerate growth. A long-term strategy for resilient transformation will instead allow these benefits to be consistently reaped by the organization, both increasing profits and improving resilience in the likely cause of a future crisis. Future crises are inevitable - whether this may be a pandemic, financial crisis, or local or global political change - and therefore making resilience a pillar of business and focusing on strategic long-term change guarantees optimal positioning for out-performing competitors. Companies that display general resilience are shown to out-perform competitors in the industry during crisis quarters more than 80% of the time.

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An example of a company that has achieved general resilience through continued transformation is the multinational conglomerate holding organization Berkshire Hathaway. Since 1995, Berkshire Hathaway has consistently outperformed in approximately 88% of crisis quarters experienced by the organization. The sustainable success of Berkshire Hathaway over this extended period of time clearly demonstrates the value of continuing to prioritize resilience transformation even in “good times”.

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The primary driver of resilient transformation is shown to be growth acceleration.

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Many start-ups and businesses mistakenly focus primarily on cost reduction when looking at areas to focus on transformation.  If only cost reduction is focused on, there may be an initial increase in profit which will falsely point to a successful transformation, but the resilience of the business is likely to decline in the future. This is because, in change programmes - especially those driven by crisis - most of the value created by resilience is shown to be the impact on differential growth. 

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When a large-scale change programme is designed to accelerate growth during a future crisis, the performance of the business improves along with resilience. This manifests in more flexible business modules and products, as well as a forward-thinking organizational culture, which allows companies to flourish despite more difficult external circumstances by focusing on new opportunities for growth. 

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Increasing flexibility and reducing debt are essential factors in resilience transformation.

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Large-scale transformation often requires significant upfront investment, which can create incentives to increase leverage. However, higher debt levels reduce resilience by increasing fixed obligations during periods of stress. Highly leveraged organizations face greater financial risk during downturns and have limited flexibility to access capital markets opportunistically.

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Reducing reliance on fixed assets improves adaptability and recovery speed during crises. Shifting cost structures toward variable expenses enhances financial resilience and operational flexibility. Transformations that prioritize debt reduction and asset-light models significantly improve the likelihood of successful resilience outcomes. When combined, these factors increase the probability of successful resilient transformation to nearly 70 percent.

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A widely cited example of resilient transformation through debt reduction is The New York Times. Following elevated leverage levels during earlier economic downturns, the organization restructured operations, divested non-core assets, and redirected capital toward digital subscriptions. By the end of the 2010s, The New York Times had eliminated debt and significantly expanded digital revenues. This transformation created financial cushioning that enabled the company to withstand subsequent disruptions, including advertising declines during the COVID-19 period.

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While resilience has always been a prerequisite for long-term success, the systemic disruptions of the early 2020s reinforced the necessity of deliberate resilience transformation. Many organizations initially pursued resilience out of necessity, but sustaining these gains requires continued investment in culture, processes, and operating models. Growth orientation, reduced debt, increased flexibility, and global competitiveness remain the defining outcomes of resilient transformation for organizations that prioritize long-term planning. In an environment defined by ongoing uncertainty, resilience continues to be a decisive factor in enduring success.

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