Designing for Resilience: A CEO/Board Imperative

How CEOs Can Better Leverage Their Boards in Times of Uncertainty

We often think of resilience as a personal attribute—linked to grit, stamina, or the ability to push through adversity. But the truth is, resilience is never just about the individual. It’s systemic, symbiotic, and constantly evolving. And in today’s environment of layered, ongoing uncertainty, leaders have an opportunity to embed resilience more deeply—by being even more deliberate about how they engage and evolve their most critical leadership structures.

The resilience that matters now—the kind that helps organizations navigate economic volatility, strategic ambiguity, and global instability—is not simply about individual endurance. It’s structural. It lives in systems, relationships, and the quality of shared leadership. One of the most overlooked mechanisms for building that kind of resilience—particularly by first-time CEOs—is the relationship between a CEO and their board.

A Time for Structural Adaptation

2025 presents a complex and compounding set of leadership pressures. Tariffs and trade shifts are reconfiguring supply chains. Market swings are persistent and unpredictable. Inflation continues to strain cost structures and consumer behavior. Interest rate instability is reshaping investment strategies. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions and policy shifts are adding fresh layers of uncertainty to global operations.

In this context, CEOs are being asked to do more with less: deliver short-term performance and drive long-term transformation. They are increasingly under pressure to lead without a clear forecast, navigate cost constraints without derailing growth, and motivate teams through uncertainty that has no defined endpoint.

This is not a passing storm—it’s a climate shift.

How CEOs engage their boards can be a differentiator in times of disruption. While governance fundamentals remain essential, organizations that build resilience intentionally use their boards as a space for reflection, foresight, and real-time recalibration—not just review.

The most effective CEOs are the architects of the boards they need.

How CEOs Can Leverage Their Boards to Increase Resilience

Resilience can’t be improvised. It must be woven into the rhythms and expectations of how leadership teams and boards operate. Below are three core practices that CEOs can use to strengthen systemic adaptability.

1. Foster Open Dialogue—Especially About the Hard Topics

Resilient organizations are marked by clarity: about direction, trade-offs, and measures of success. But clarity rarely emerges from consensus alone—it’s shaped by productive tension.

That means treating the boardroom as a place for genuine, two-way dialogue—where strategy is pressure-tested. CEOs must be transparent about what’s uncertain or evolving. Resilience grows in an open dialogue where everyone in the room actively challenges assumptions and introduces new ways of framing complex issues.

In high-performing boards, dissent isn’t avoided—it’s valued, not as friction but as a catalyst for sharper insight, shared ownership, and better decisions.

When dialogue sharpens perspective—on both sides—it strengthens leadership alignment and builds organizational agility.

2. Rethink a Board Refreshment as a Developmental Lever

Regular board refreshments and annual assessments—especially for public companies—are foundational governance practices. But they’re also just the starting point. Resilient boards go beyond the check-the-box compliance to reflect on their own effectiveness and evolution. If it’s not already happening, CEOs have an opportunity to drive this conversation.

What capabilities does the company need represented at the board level—right now? Does the current composition reflect the evolving business model, risk profile, and global context? Is there a range of lived experiences and worldviews represented at the table? It’s not enough to have the right former or current titles; what’s needed is breadth of thinking, contextual insight, and informed dissent.

Boards with outdated profiles can unintentionally constrain decision-making. Those with purposeful, relevant diversity of experience are better equipped to respond to disruptions.

3. Rebalance the Agenda Toward Forward Risk and Opportunity

Even the best boards tend to focus more heavily on retrospective reviews during periods of disruption. It’s understandable—when the pressure is high, there’s a strong pull to double down on oversight: the financial updates, compliance, and operational details. These are important conversations, but they can easily crowd out the space needed for broader, forward-looking dialogue.

Resilience depends not just on knowing where you are but on anticipating where you might need to go next.

That means deliberately carving out board time to explore:

– What external forces could reshape our strategy in the next 12–24 months?
– What capabilities must we invest in now to be resilient later?
– What assumptions—about customers, markets, talent—may no longer be true?

Every agenda is a signal. It reflects what leadership values and where attention is going. Make sure it reflects not just where you’ve been—but where you need to go.

Resilience Is a Shared Responsibility

Organizational resilience is strengthened when systems are aligned, trust is high, and the right people are empowered to challenge, adapt, and lead together.

Boards play a critical role in that system and particularly in this economic environment, CEOs have an opportunity—if not an imperative—to leverage their boards as dynamic partners, resilience enablers, and force multipliers. It won’t just protect against downside risks; it will shape bolder decisions and strategic advantages.

—Julie Locke