By Nelisiwe Mabutyana, Head of Finance at SPM
Resilience in business used to mean weathering a tough year and coming out with profit margins intact. Today, it means something far more layered. It is about leading through chaos while staying grounded. It is about recognising vulnerability as a source of intelligence. And it is about knowing when to hold the line, and when to redraw it entirely.
The word gets thrown around during every downturn. It shows up in boardrooms, investor reports, and employee town halls. But too often, it becomes a slogan rather than a practice. If resilience is going to remain useful in this economic and social climate, it needs to be lived, not announced.
In technical, resource-driven industries, volatility is a constant. Supply chains buckle. Talent pipelines narrow. Load-shedding, inflation, and shifting compliance standards all exert pressure that could destabilise even a mature operation. But these moments also expose which internal systems are working, and which ones are cosmetic.
Resilience Is Structural, Not Emotional
Many teams still equate resilience with optimism. Hope has its place, but it is not a strategy. Resilience lives in the design of a business: its decision-making frameworks, capital allocation models, data hygiene, and leadership development. It does not live in slogans. It is visible in cash flow clarity, policy strength, and how decisions hold under scrutiny.
Finance functions are sometimes viewed as back-office scorekeepers. In reality, they are nerve centres for risk, foresight, and capital intelligence. But resilience does not sit within finance alone. It emerges through real collaboration across operations, people, compliance, and IT. Alignment across these areas increases a company’s capacity to absorb shocks and keep moving.
Resilience Is Operational Foresight
It is not about bouncing back to old models. It is about staying ready to evolve while still functional. Businesses that remain agile do not pivot constantly. They set up disciplined structures that can absorb change without fragmentation.
When teams struggle under pressure, the root issue is often misalignment on priorities. Clarity disappears when teams are not connected to purpose or do not have data to guide rapid decisions. Operational foresight helps prevent that. It means understanding both the short-term landscape and long-range impacts. It means reading both the balance sheet and the cultural temperature of a workforce. It means budgets that breathe, but still hold shape.
Resilience Also Means Letting Go
Endurance is part of resilience, but so is release. It often takes more courage to stop doing something than to keep going. Obsolete processes, unnecessary layers of approval, redundant KPIs, and outdated reporting structures can quietly drain energy and slow responsiveness. Many organisations hold onto these out of habit or fear.
The finance function has a special role here. It must be willing to challenge legacy thinking. Assumptions around capital allocation, growth targets, or risk appetite need to be revisited regularly. Success can no longer be defined by growth alone. A resilient business grows when the conditions are right and holds firm when they are not, without losing identity or momentum.
People Are the Core of Every Resilient System
Technology and process matter. But without trust, clarity, and support, even the most advanced systems fail under stress. Resilience takes shape in daily interactions, in how feedback is shared, how failure is handled, how clarity is maintained when uncertainty increases.
High-performing teams are not always the most experienced. They are the ones that communicate with intention, ask the right questions early, and support each other during ambiguity. Culture becomes a shock absorber.
People also need more than tasks. They need context. They need leadership that explains the meaning behind decisions and encourages healthy risk without fear of blame. Systems should be designed to protect people from burnout, not simply track performance.
Resilience Is Built Through Discipline, Not Optimism
Access to data is no longer the problem. Businesses are surrounded by dashboards and metrics. The real challenge is separating the signal from the noise. A resilient company focuses on what truly matters, not what looks good in a report.
Too often, leaders get buried under irrelevant indicators. Instead of clarity, there is confusion. Strong financial leadership means identifying the metrics that reflect actual value creation. It means designing feedback loops that allow teams to learn in real time. And it means creating space to pause, reflect, and adjust, without spinning in place.
Discipline in decision-making does not mean inflexibility. It means the ability to absorb feedback without paralysis. It means the courage to act when needed and the wisdom to wait when it is premature to do so. That discipline is the real spine of business resilience.
Culture Makes or Breaks Resilience
Resilience is not something that can be announced into existence. If a company’s values are lived, they show up under pressure. If they are performative, they disappear at the first sign of strain.
Resilient cultures create consistency. People know where they stand, and they know how leadership will behave in both growth and contraction. It does not mean leadership has all the answers, but it means leadership takes accountability for direction and coherence.
When teams trust that decisions are made with care, even difficult news can be handled well. People can move forward without needing constant reassurance because they see that actions match words.
What the Future Demands
The next decade will not reward companies that scale the fastest. It will reward those who scale wisely. Organisations will be asked to navigate global disruption, shifting resource constraints, and generational shifts in how work is valued. The pressures will be higher, but so will the opportunities, if they are met with integrity and preparation.
Finance leaders in particular need to move beyond reporting and toward deeper strategic integration. That means capital frameworks designed for agility. It means real-time modelling, not rear-view analysis. And it means creating internal alignment that allows teams to absorb setbacks without falling apart.
Resilience is not a mood or a message. It is a practice. It is a set of systems, behaviours, and decisions that allow a company to stay relevant and capable, even when the context changes.
Businesses that build this kind of resilience are not simply reactive. They are composed, clear, and ready.