Validation & Exercises
Validation increases Strategic Resilience
Don’t wait for the next disruption to reveal weakness in your organization.
There are two primary ways to validate whether the organization is becoming more resilient:
Validation based on Results
Results matter. Results cut through uncertainty and force us to answer: Did our strategy work? Did our operations deliver expected results? And, are measuring the right results? Results keep us in touch with reality, regardless of a leader’s confident assertions.
Results provide feedback. For organizations striving for resilience, this feedback is golden. Gathering the right feedback early, watching the right leading metrics, can provide threat indicators and allow leaders and their team to adjust course, to adapt, to pivot towards the steps that enable contiuied pursuit of the mission.
Results can be measured in the short- or long-term. Let’s not declare premature victory, or provide leaders and teams with inappropriate incentives to perform well in the short-term, to the organization’s future detriment.
Results enable resilience.
Validation based on Exercises
Leaders cannot wait months or years for validation. Yes, measuring interim results provide feedback to adjust and adapt, but this is not enough.
Leaders need to push the limits on their organizations. They need to explore the edge.
Conducting exercises allows organizations to test themselves, in a controlled environment, to provide validation of their resilience, to identify gaps that require investment.
Exercises are flexible and built to suit the organization. They can be structured as initial training and awareness sessions for new leaders on the Strategic Response Team. Or they can be designed to be very challenging using a variety of scenarios, such as:
Simulating a disrupted business model,
Confirming the availability of emergency or urgent financing
Assessing competitor actions that disrupt the status-quo
Recalibrating after a change the organization’s ownership structure
Confirming strategic alignment and functionality of an alternate vendor
Summary
Feedback from results and exercises provide validation and insights, to help leaders navigate today’s decisions. To better allocate resources. To understand where their organization may be strong enough. To prioritize where it still needs strengthening.
The path to resilience doesn’t end. Organizations are dynamic. Customers, markets and ecosystems are dynamic. Conduct exercises. Gather results feedback. Use these insights to reallocate resources to adapt.
Validation builds resilience.