It takes a resilient organisation to weather today’s storm of geopolitical and climate instability, supply chain volatility, economic unpredictability and technological change. But as these and other disruptors become the norm, the very definition of organisational resilience is changing, argues Niharika Garud, an associate professor in management and associate dean (engagement) at the University of Melbourne.“Traditionally, resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from setbacks, challenges or stressors,” she says. “But the new paradigm for resilient organisations is understanding how to bounce forward. There’s no going back to the baseline because the baseline doesn’t exist anymore.”Over the past two decades, the increasing interconnectedness of global business has meant that disruption in one market, sector or region can leave businesses exposed to forces outside their immediate sector. “Every day we are looking at events unfolding in other parts of the world, and it’s changing the way your business is going to operate this year,” Garud says.The shift is reflected in McKinsey’s The State of Organizations 2026 report, published in February, which draws on a survey of more than 10,000 senior executives across 15 countries and 16 industries. The report argues that organisations are moving from “short-term resilience” to “sustained productivity and long-term impact”, as technology and AI, economic disruption, geopolitical uncertainty and changing workforce expectations reshape the way they grow, operate and lead.For businesses, resilience may need to go beyond crisis response, Garud says. The future of resilience looks more like a core operating discipline, based on the ability to make decisions with incomplete information, keep critical services running, redeploy people and capital quickly, and continue creating value as conditions change.Thinking like a startupGarud says large organisations often struggle today because their structures were designed to create stability, predictability and efficiency, whereas the current environment demands agility, experimentation and comfort with uncertainty. The “startup mindset” – comfortable operating without assuming resources or efficiencies will remain stable – is becoming standard.“You can’t be fixed in doing things or thinking, ‘we did this 30 years ago, it has worked and it will continue to work’,” Garud says. “That mindset won’t fundamentally work over the next 10 years in Australia.”Retail and technology-adjacent businesses may be closer to the change, but she says digitisation, cloud computing, AI, robotics and new materials are now reaching sectors such as building and construction, which previously seemed further from digital transformation.The great experimentTransformation of this scale requires foresight, leadership and an appetite for experimentation that’s fostered throughout the entire organisation.“Experimentation is important because you cannot just wake up as a company in 2026 and say, we are going to digitise and just completely transform our business models,” Garud says. “It doesn’t work that way. You have to build the workforce, the internal infrastructure and the operations to be able to embrace or lead the change.”She shares the example of an Australian telecommunications company running internal hackathons to test system boundaries. “Companies have to think about preparing for things which seem very far away, but they’re actually not. The rate of change has gone up significantly thanks to new tech, so you need to think about how to institutionalise experimental startup mindset approaches to make teams better prepared.”Garud is in favour of 3M’s 15% culture, an institutional practice that’s been operating since about 1948. The principle encourages employees to spend 15% of their work time – roughly one day a week – on personal or experimental side projects, and learning new skills. Google later adopted a similar approach and labelled it the 20% time policy.“You start to see your workforce being able to delve into experimentation mode and embrace change, because they can see leadership is championing thinking differently and learning new things,” Garud says.Professional development supports organisational resilienceForward-thinking organisations lay the groundwork for a more resilient culture of innovation and experimentation, but the capabilities of the workforce are just as important, says Owen Shemansky, the director of Melbourne Professional Education (MPE), an arm of the University of Melbourne that’s dedicated to providing professional development and capability uplift for organisations.Skills such as judgment and communication are often built over time and with hands-on experience, but can also be fostered through professional development, Shemansky says. Also critical is a practical understanding of digital and data capability. “Being able to question outputs and recognise when something looks plausible but is wrong … is now becoming a baseline for professional competence, not a specialist extra,” he says.Shemansky says professional education works best when it’s grounded in the real pressures people face at work. By giving teams shared language, practical frameworks and repeated opportunities to apply new skills, organisations can build future-leaning capabilities such as judgment under pressure and cross-functional problem solving.“Resilient organisations give capable teams enough authority to respond close to the problem,” Shemansky says. “They create clear guardrails so people know where they can act. And they keep investing in leadership and workforce capability so the organisation can adapt without losing performance.”Learn how the University of Melbourne can help your organisation thrive.