Business, Politics, and Cultivating Resilience

Business doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Sometimes external conditions exert a much larger force than usual. That is certainly the case today, with political and environmental change, economic uncertainty, regional conflicts, and population displacement happening around the world. As I write this, it’s just a few months before a highly consequential U.S. presidential election.

A newsletter recently landed in my inbox that claimed to offer “everything leaders need to know about creating guidelines around political discourse at work, encouraging civic engagement, and combating election stress in your workforce.” The variety of tools it listed for putting ideas into action included templates, discussion guides, checklists, and the like.

“Election stress” seems like a strange thing for business leaders and managers to worry about, but it makes sense in a time of such division. And it’s certainly not the only source of stress that you and your teams are confronting today.

This is why resilience has become such a popular topic. Global uncertainty? You need supply chain resilience. Vulnerabilities in your technology systems? Cyber resilience. Ongoing business change? Workforce resilience. The list goes on.

In mid-August, the secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping warned of a threat to world trade due to rising U.S. protectionist policies, according to the Financial Times. While he expressed particular concern over the nationalist policies of a potential second Trump presidency, he criticized the Biden administration’s stance on Chinese shipping as well. A week earlier, global shipping giant Maersk noted that many customers were bringing orders forward over fears of a potential trade war between China and the U.S.

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This is just one of many factors that supply chain leaders must consider in their planning today. So how do business leaders cultivate the kind of resilience that goes beyond reaction and defense? In “Make Smarter Investments in Resilient Supply Chains,” authors Walid Klibi, Kai Trepte, and James B. Rice Jr. describe how businesses that take a real options approach to supply chain planning make better investments for long-term resilience and avoid the boom-and-bust cycle of reacting to crisis situations. This strategy prioritizes projects based on cost relative to their marginal value rather than purely on the probability of particular scenarios, thus enabling managers to justify resilience investments in financial terms.

Business leaders who want to build organizational resilience must cultivate their teams’ and their own personal resilience. The external forces mentioned above, plus the personal stressors of health, safety, family, and economic stability, affect us all. Resilience makes it possible to thrive despite such challenges.

However, as we put a premium on resilience, let’s make sure we don’t disparage vulnerability in the process. Some people are inherently resilient while others need more support. It’s the leaders’ job to create the systems and environment for that. As Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy wrote in “Stop Telling Employees to be Resilient” in our publication in 2022, “there’s a difference between demanding that everyone be mentally tough and actually helping them take care of their mental health.” A recent LinkedIn community post listed ways for leaders to develop their own resilience in the face of challenges, including embracing failure, seeking support, managing stress, pursuing continuous learning, setting realistic goals, and engaging in self-reflection. The demands on leadership are high right now. Don’t forget to breathe.