The Advantage of Enterprise Resilience

By Dominic Schofield

Schofield is chair and managing partner of Korn Ferry’s Board & CEO Services practice in the UK.

November 24, 2025

If you’ve sat in a board meeting of late, I bet you’ve heard some version of “If it happens, this is what we’ll do.” The “it” could be anything: a cybersecurity breach, navigating political turbulence, AI disruption, or a toughening consumer base that’s spending less because of nervousness about the future.

The constant vigilance by boards and the need to have contingency plans for contingency plans is exhausting. We’re going through more CEO-succession exercises than I’ve ever seen—not because people are retiring or moving on necessarily, but because boards are genuinely worried about continuity in ways they never used to be.

What’s more, the unspoken assumption that politics is something that happens around boards, not to them, is dissolving. In previous years, it didn’t really matter who was in power, because the fundamental framework of business remained stable. But now the rules are shifting, and political pressure is no longer background noise. It’s affecting the day-to-day operations of companies in ways we never anticipated.

"They aren’t using old playbooks for new problems."

No doubt, this all can make a person’s head spin. But there’s another way to view these issues: as a chance for companies to hone what I’d label enterprise resilience. Sure, it’s a bit of an abstract concept, but the idea of enterprise resilience is that you’re ready for whatever may come your way. If your industry is highly regulated, for example, how do politics affect your operating environment? If you’re consumer-facing, how do you respond to shifting consumer sentiment, like a burgeoning movement away from processed foods, or the trend toward cheaper retail alternatives during economic uncertainty? And if you’re in the energy sector, how do you deal with the surging global demand for data centers, or the impacts of energy-supply disruptions and volatile prices?

These questions are at the core of enterprise resilience. In organizations where it’s embedded in or on its way to becoming part of an organization’s aura, board meetings take on a different tone. Directors sit as a group asking: If we win, how do we sustain that? If we lose, how do we pivot? They view culture as a critical part of every strategic conversation. They aren’t using old playbooks for new problems, but actually planning for the future by embracing the instability of the present and moving through it.

At a time when the psychology of leadership is shifting and there’s a constant need to think about stability and reassure markets that we’re prepared for whatever comes next, having enterprise resilience may be the difference between barely staying afloat and growing and thriving. Sometimes it’s in the most difficult environments that good companies become great companies, because uncertainty drives people to change.

In a sense, priorities for boards and top leadership are going through a tectonic shift that I think needs more attention. For directors, leadership was once all about managing stakeholders, particularly major investors. Attention was put heavily into
market developments and how your firm responded to them, which included the push for shorter-term revenue-growth results that kept stock prices high. But today, enterprise resilience could be the true test of leadership.

Indeed, the organizations that will thrive in 2026 and beyond won’t be those that simply weather the storm, but those that have fundamentally reimagined what it means to be resilient. The ones that have moved beyond reactive contingency planning to proactive adaptation and have learned to see political and cultural shifts not as threats to manage, but as realities to navigate strategically. In a world where the only constant is change, enterprise resilience isn’t just about survival—it’s about turning uncertainty into competitive advantage.

Photo Credits: Rob Dobi; Sylverarts/Getty Images