When an athlete steps onto the field, a pilot pulls back on the yoke, or a musician takes the stage, they aren’t relying on a manual. They are relying on muscle memory, the ingrained responses built through practice, rehearsal, and repetition. In the same way, organizations under stress can’t afford to flip through binders or scroll through PDFs. Their response must already live in their people.

Crises don’t just test systems, they test people.

Every decision in a high-pressure environment comes with weight. Leaders know that a single call can affect safety, reputation, or survival. Under that strain, decision-making shifts from being a strength to being a liability. Fatigue sets in. Options blur. Risk becomes harder to gauge.

This is the hidden cost of crisis leadership. It’s not only the external disruption that wears organizations down, but also the internal erosion of judgment when leaders are forced to decide and decide and decide again.

Organizations often respond to disruption by fixating on the cause: a new security threat, a natural disaster, a pandemic, or social unrest. Leaders rush to ask: What if this happens again? How do we prevent it?

But in doing so, they can miss the deeper truth: while causes may differ, their effects often repeat in predictable ways. And resilience lives in responding effectively to those effects.

When ransomware makes headlines, the focus is usually on the scale of disruption or the financial losses. But behind every crisis response are people: the security analysts, IT teams, and incident responders who absorb the brunt of the pressure. And increasingly, the human cost of cyber disruption is becoming one of the most critical, yet overlooked, dimensions of resilience.

Amid the federal law enforcement and the National Guard surge into Washington, D.C., the headlines are focused on politics, safety, and immediate risks. But beneath the surface, these moments reveal something deeper about organizational and community resilience. All of Washington, D.C. is now navigating a transformation of its physical and psychological environment, and the lessons extend far beyond the capital.

When a hurricane strikes a port city or a wildfire threatens a logistics hub, the supply chain disruption is obvious, immediate, and visible. But increasingly, the most dangerous risks are the ones organizations don’t see coming: hidden climate cascades.

Global leaders are navigating what some are calling a perfect storm, a convergence of crises that test not just operational capability but the very culture and cohesion of their organizations. Climate instability, rapid AI disruption, geopolitical conflict, and economic volatility are no longer sequential challenges; they are simultaneous, compounding forces.

The COVID-19 pandemic was not just a health crisis, it was a multi-layered operational disruption that tested the resilience of organizations worldwide. Over the course of the initial outbreak and through the waves that followed, I had the opportunity to support more than half a dozen global organizations, each with distinct footprints, missions, and risk profiles. The scale and diversity of needs made this both one of the most demanding and most illuminating periods of my professional practice.

In the last year alone, CEO turnover reached historic highs across the S&P 500. Leadership changes are surging, driven by burnout, activist pressure, and shifting board expectations. But while headlines focus on who’s leaving, the real story is who (and what) comes next.

When senior leaders exit without warning or preparation, the disruption isn’t just internal. It ripples through markets, erodes trust, and exposes operational gaps that even the best crisis plans can’t patch in real time.

In boardrooms, supply chains are often discussed as cost centers, efficiency engines, or procurement puzzles. But in a world where geopolitical tension, trade weaponization, and component scarcity can halt operations overnight, supply chains must be understood for what they truly are: infrastructure. And like any infrastructure, they need to be resilient by design.

When power systems failed across Spain and Portugal, and a major cyberattack disrupted retail operations in the UK, the headlines focused on outages, service delays, and economic impact. But behind the noise was something quieter, and more consequential: a wide-ranging test of resilience across borders and affecting multiple sectors.

In crisis work, there are few situations more complex or emotionally charged than a tragic loss of life. One organization I supported experienced just such an event: a devastating overseas accident that resulted in multiple fatalities and serious injuries, affecting all but two members of the country team. The moment called not only for decisive action, but for an extraordinary level of coordination, care, and clarity under pressure.

In today’s dynamic global environment, it's easy to conflate resilience with business continuity planning (BCP). After all, both aim to protect the organization and sustain operations under stress. But true resilience is far more than documented procedures and backup systems. It's a living capability rooted in culture, leadership, and adaptability.

Organizations that treat crisis response as a path back to normalcy risk missing the full potential of resilience. Recovery gets systems back online. Resilience asks: what can we learn, adapt, and strengthen so we're better positioned next time?

Most organizations view crisis response as a defensive maneuver—mitigating damage, restoring function, managing reputation. But resilient organizations go further. They use disruption as a proving ground for innovation, alignment, and momentum. In short, they turn response into advantage.

Many organizations are confident in their crisis and continuity plans—until the moment they need to use them. That’s when reality reveals what the binder missed. The better test of resilience isn’t how complete your documentation is. It’s how your team responds under pressure. That’s where simulations come in.