Finding Resilience

Years ago, three friends and I treated ourselves to a ‘steeps clinic’—a day of guided skiing that took us up to and beyond the limits of our ability. Standing atop one near-vertical pitch, I was convinced the route our guide had suggested was simply not possible: it wasn’t so much a ‘slope’ as a wall of ice and overhanging snow.

Looking over the 20’ drop to the long, long way down the steep slope below, I could reach only one conclusion: He’s kidding, right?! And then he skied it.

He simply stepped sideways off the edge, pushed some snow with him, and let gravity do some work while checking his speed and direction with turns that looked strong, elegant, and… familiar.

Soon it was my turn, and sure enough, once my heart dropped back down from my throat to my chest, I stuck to techniques I knew, followed his lead, and successfully skied the pitch.

My takeaway? Despite my fear, our guide unlocked a limiting belief and showed me the impossible can be achievable when we trust our instincts and expertise.

Does Success Feel Unattainable Right Now?

This past year, it’s been our experience that less than 10% of leaders are purposefully advancing their organizations. Many are preparing for worse, postponing projects, deferring ambitions, and ‘battening down the hatches.’ Most, though, seem simply to be stuck. They’re not making decisions because the context is changing too quickly. They’re not taking risks because the downside appears too near. And they’re not trusting their instincts or experience to guide them through the very real challenges we’re all facing.  

Finding Resilience

Organizational resilience—the ability to survive and thrive despite shocks and evolving risks—has become a central priority for leaders worldwide. From supply chain disruptions and trade unpredictability to regulatory whiplash, companies face a world less certain and more volatile than ever.

Climate policy rollbacks undermine long-term investment in clean technology and inject further uncertainty into strategic planning for an economy increasingly shaped by volatility. Amid this unpredictability, resilience is no longer just risk management—it’s about transforming the business model toward adaptability and stakeholder trust.

The Role of Social Purpose

Research demonstrates that businesses with a clearly defined social purpose outperform their less purpose-driven competitors in resilience, growth, and stakeholder loyalty. Social purpose is the company’s reason to exist beyond profit—a commitment to the long-term wellbeing of people and planet. To embed social purpose is to align leadership, core operations, and other resources and capacity so societal benefit and business success reinforce each other.

Six significant benefits drive resilience for social purpose organizations:

1. Strengthen Social Capital and Trust: Purpose-driven companies actively address societal problems and build trust with communities, media, regulators, and governments. This social capital is a significant buffer in times of crisis, providing goodwill that helps organizations weather shifting conditions, worrisome headlines, and disrupted markets. By being transparent about their values and purpose, businesses can align with stakeholders’ expectations, which reduces reputational risk and increases loyalty—even amid uncertain markets.  
2. Engage and Retain Top Talent: Employees increasingly select employers based on values and meaningful work. Companies with a strong social purpose attract and retain motivated talent, driving higher engagement, productivity, and innovation. Research shows purpose-driven teams are more loyal and productive, with lower turnover—a critical advantage during economic shocks when retaining institutional knowledge matters.
3. Financial Performance and Risk Management: Purposeful brands grow faster than conventional competitors—over 175% brand value growth in leading studies versus 70-86% in others. These companies enjoy new revenue streams tied to social impact, increased access to capital, and are more resilient against market shocks. Purpose guides financial decision-making, enabling companies to weather disruption and even pivot to new opportunities.
4. Cross-Sectoral Relationships and Collaboration: Trust-based partnerships open doors for collaboration with governments, NGOs, academic institutions, and even competitors. In a time of tariff wars and regulatory chaos, these relationships grant businesses a seat at the policy table, sparking mutual support and knowledge exchange that soften the damage volatility can cause. Collaborative companies report greater ability to anticipate shocks, and increased sales through more diverse revenue streams.
5. Innovation Generation: Social purpose catalyzes innovation—especially valuable when legacy supply chains and markets break down. Organizations committed to solving societal problems develop agile cultures and are more likely to invest in transformative change, enabling them to pivot and adapt quickly during uncertainty. This agility is imperative when policies and tariffs threaten existing products, services, or suppliers.
6. Customer Commitment and Loyalty: Consumers now expect brands to solve real problems—76% of Canadians and 80% of global consumers believe companies should prioritize values along with profit. Brands that authentically contribute to social or environmental progress win loyalty in ways that bolster their reputations and market share during operational disruptions.

How Can You Build Organizational Resilience?

Clearly, this isn’t a one-time thing. There’s no magic wand that will make your organization resilient. Instead, this is about creating new mindsets, practices, and rhythms in your organization that over time, create the conditions for resilience. Here are some of those practices: 

Anchor Strategic Planning in Purpose

Use frameworks like Junxion’s three-step process to define your organizational purpose—which we encourage you to define as the optimal, strategic contribution your organization will make to the wellbeing of all people and the environment:

1. Identify your passion: What social or environmental challenges matter most to your business and team? (Talk to us about helping you assess what challenges are most likely to impact your organization and stakeholders.)
2. Identify your proficiencies: Pinpoint unique strengths—products, influence, capital, networks—that differentiate your organization from your peers and competitors.
3. Align toward a relevant societal problem: Focus on issues where passion and proficiencies overlap—especially those relevant to your industry or the communities where you operate.

This intersection of passion, proficiency, and problem is the purpose sweet spot—the strategic intersection (or, dare we say, Junxion?!) where your business has the best chance to deliver resilience for both itself and its stakeholders.

Build an Open, Communicative Culture of Interpersonal Trust

Organizational resilience builds on the resilience of individual people and their work teams. Leadership means presenting to colleagues as ‘100% human at work’ (a phrase we borrow from our friends at Virgin Unite)—share insights into your emotional life, your doubts and concerns, and those areas where you don’t feel expert. Whether you ask for help or not (and you should!), this opens space for colleagues whose strengths complement your own to step up, step in, and make a meaningful contribution to organizational success.

Of course, this is not just for people who hold positions of leadership. Rather, this is a team sport: we’re all in the work together, and on a healthy team, the whole can be much greater than the sum of individual team members’ skills and expertise.

Embrace and Embed Practical Tools 

Hands-on tools and activities can also boost resilience. Leaders can accelerate cultural change with simple, interactive practices that make resilience tangible for every team member. For example, co-creating a Team Norms Charter invites staff to define shared behaviours and expectations, creating a context of alignment and trust, and the opportunity for each individual to hold their peers accountable to those group commitments. Resilience Hacks (applied brainstorming sessions) empower teams to surface everyday solutions for stress reduction or workflow improvement—generating momentum through bottom-up innovation. Commitment Mapping, where individuals and teams publicly pledge specific resilience-building actions, ensures accountability and sustains progress over time. Incorporating these concrete exercises reinforces habits while signalling a genuine investment in the wellbeing and adaptability of your organization. 

Involve Employees in Purpose Definition

Engage staff at every level to co-create the company’s purpose, diversifying thinking, engendering buy-in, and building enthusiasm. Conduct workshops and surveys to uncover values, worries, and insights into your capacity, using collaborative tools to synthesize these into a clear, actionable purpose statement. Authentic engagement ensures the resulting purpose and the strategy that unfolds to pursue it aren’t just top-down commands, but principles that emerge from the collective and get embedded into your organizational culture.

Embed Purpose into Daily Operations

Infuse the defined social purpose throughout business practices—not just as a marketing statement but within hiring, supply chain management, product design, and policy advocacy. In troubling times, this alignment enables rapid, values-based decision-making in complex and ambiguous situations. Get in touch with us to learn about departmental best practices—methods to embed purpose in marketing, HR, finance, operations—and across your whole enterprise.

Diversify and Future-Proof Supply Chains

A resilient organization with a clear social purpose can advance beyond linear, brittle supply chains by promoting transparency, sustainability, and circularity. This means localizing suppliers where possible, building redundancies and alternatives into sourcing, and partnering with purpose-driven vendors that share your values and ambitions. Purposeful supply chains can better withstand system shocks and rapid change.

Develop Purpose-Driven Partnerships

Work across sectors and industries with like-minded organizations to pursue shared societal goals. Collaborations with NGOs, governments, and competitors can generate new market insights and operational support during market volatility, while reinforcing a culture of shared learning and risk-sharing. Partnering isn’t new: plenty of best practices are as applicable today in pursuit of social purpose as they have been for decades in pursuit of financial gain. The advantage of purpose-aligned partnerships lies in the dramatically higher levels of commitment to the shared goals—so partnerships are more focused, durable, and effective. 

The Virtuous Cycle: Purpose Drives Performance and Resilience

Purposeful companies create a virtuous cycle, eliminating social harms and thereby reducing costs and risks, driving innovation, and enabling even greater community and business impact. Resilience is not static—it’s reinforced at every iteration of this cycle, as businesses and their communities grow together. Leaders can dramatically strengthen organizational resilience by defining, embracing, and authentically embedding social purpose at the heart of their strategy.

By prioritizing purpose, involving employees, building trust-based relationships, and creating virtuous cycles of value creation, leaders can make their organizations truly future-proof, whatever crises tomorrow’s headlines may bring.

Are you seeking more resilience for your organization? We’ve spent 25+ years using sustainability, social impact and purpose to future-proof organizations. Have a chat with our consultants to see if we can help you.