One word keeps cropping up in boardrooms and on earnings calls: resilience. Chief executives are using it to describe how they are handling crisis after crisis.
Corporate leaders have dealt with myriad challenges over the past six years. Covid shutdowns and port strikes upended supply chains and wars in Ukraine and Iran pushed up energy prices. Ever-shifting tariff policies added costs, and the explosion in artificial intelligence is quickly transforming business.
These major changes are no longer just temporary — they are part of everyday life now. Investors and board directors, usually focused on short-term performance and growth, have also come to value the leadership skills needed to flex and adapt in a chaotic geopolitical environment.
Leaders must have the wherewithal to anticipate and absorb shocks to their businesses and adjust quickly.
“They don’t realize how much more they’ve grown up in a world that values resilience,” Rich Lesser, global chair of the Boston Consulting Group, a professional services firm, said. “Their training and their mind-set is so much more resilient than it would have been at the end of the last decade.”
Since January 2020, variations of the word “resilience” (think: “resilient” and “resiliency”) rose 162 percent on the earnings calls of U.S. public companies with a market cap of at least $1 billion, according to the A.I. research firm AlphaSense. The use of the term was beginning to wane in 2023 and 2024. But it spiked again after President Trump announced sweeping tariffs last April. It has been ticking up for the past couple of quarters.
The word is offered as explanation for how executives are moving through uncertainty, making agile decisions and not allowing existential challenges to hobble them and their organization.
“You have wars, you have fuel spikes, you have economic issues, recessions, and you got to be prepared for the long term as a business because the shocks are going to happen,” Bob Jordan, the chief executive of Southwest Airlines, told investors on conference call this month. “That’s why we’ve created a very resilient business here.”
C.E.O.s light up when asked about this word. They reach for it to describe their leadership style. They tick off the various forms that resiliency can take. Resilience, in many ways, is their antidote to uncertainty.
Thasunda Brown Duckett, chief executive of T.I.A.A., the investment firm that runs retirement plans, said “resilience” was necessary to handle all the changes that took place during the company’s 108-year history. But what’s changed, she said, is the speed and the pace at which businesses can be affected.
“A conflict halfway around the world can have a direct economic implication almost instantly,” Ms. Duckett said in an email. “And C.E.O.s are being asked to have a public point of view on all of it, in real time.”
Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biotech giant, has drastically changed its organizational structure to keep up with that velocity. Since January 2024, the company has eliminated a third of its managers.
Bill Anderson, the chief executive of Bayer, said he wanted to push more power to the specialized teams within the company to allow them to make decisions faster.
“Companies have crisis management departments and risk management groups and contingency plans and that’s all fine, but that’s not how you get resilient,” Mr. Anderson said in an interview on the sidelines of the Semafor World Economy summit earlier this month. “The way you get resilience is you have an organization that is flexible, adaptable.”
Ermenegildo Zegna, the executive chairman of the luxury men’s clothing company Zegna Group, and his family have steered the Italian suit-maker through every war, oil shock and financial crisis since his grandfather founded the business in 1910.
Mr. Zegna stressed the importance of keeping a brand strong during tough times. For luxury brands like Zegna, the war in Iran has become their biggest looming problem. The Middle East, which had been a vital source for growth, has been shattered by instability, with tourist flows almost entirely halted.
“The entrepreneur has to always look at the positive side, but always be ready for the worst,” Mr. Zegna said. “I’m using the accelerator and the brake.”
Leaders stressed the importance of having a clear, strategic vision for their business, which allows them to focus when there’s so much macroeconomic uncertainty. Being able to communicate to employees — and investors — what a company’s goals are builds confidence.
“You need to have what we call ‘shared consciousness,” said Joanne Crevoiserat, the chief executive of Tapestry, which owns the fashion brands Coach and Kate Spade. “Everybody has to understand the mission.”
At PacSun, a shopping mall purveyor of California style, management has rebuilt the organization with a single vision in mind. Coming out of bankruptcy in 2016, the company prioritized stronger partnerships with both its customers and collaborators to help its business withstand any disaster, its chief executive, Brieane Olson, said.
“More important than resilience for me at PacSun, in my leadership, is building trust,” Ms. Olson said. “You’re including suppliers, your brand associates that work in your stores, your customers.”
Investors are looking for resilient leaders as well.
“That has be part of the operating model” Hemant Taneja, chief executive of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm, said. “Every C.E.O. needs to lead with a foundation of trust in that regard in this world.”
In the health care sector, long thought of as impervious to global fluctuations because people always need medical care, companies are talking about driving down prices for consumers and speeding up the insurance approval process.
Zach Reitano, chief executive of Ro, a direct-to-consumer company that offers access to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and online care with advertisements featuring Serena Williams, said top bosses need financial, cultural and strategic resilience. Yet he stressed the importance of being resilient as a way to best serve customers.
“How do you make sure that as the world is changing underneath you, that whatever product or service that you are providing, they still get what they have paid for and what they earn and what they deserve?” Mr. Reitano said.
Resilient is also a favorite term for leaders describing American consumers, who are still spending even though they’re trying to stretch their dollars. “This is a much more resilient economy than people believe it to be, particularly when shocks occur,” Mr. Lesser said.
Monique Rodriguez, founder and chief executive of Mielle Organics, now owned by P&G Beauty, said remembering consumers and staying true to the ethos of the brand is a key part of building and maintaining a resilient business.
“Serving her may mean we take a hit on the back end,” she said of her products designed for textured hair. “She shouldn’t have to decide between hair care and groceries.”
WeWork’s world was altered forever when the pandemic shifted workers away from the traditional office. John Santora, who took over the beleaguered office space rental company as it emerged from bankruptcy in 2024, is coping with the new reality. He’s trying to shift the company’s business model and project confidence to his investors, employees and clients. WeWork now offers shorter and more flexible leases. It has also benefited from the growth of A.I. companies that need more office space as they expand.
“You manage through it and you lead through it,” Mr. Santora said.
And now WeWork, he added, has a bit of “built-in resiliency.”
Kimberly S. Johnson contributed reporting.
