Building the organisational muscles for perpetual volatility

Fikile Sibiya, CIO at e4.

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We now live in a brave new world of perpetual volatility. It is not one storm, but a rolling weather system of load-shedding, currency whiplash, geopolitical shocks and disruptive technologies. "You cannot react your way through that," says Fikile Sibiya, CIO at e4. "You have to build for it."

The dust of today’s single disruptive event barely has time to settle before the next arrives. Traditional strategic planning, or those anchored in annual off‑sites and static three‑year roadmaps, simply can’t keep pace. The organisations that will endure are those that design for turbulence.

Strategic agility is not a project plan. It is the day-to-day ability to scan, sense, decide and shift, sometimes as many times as it takes, before the market forces the C-suite’s hand. Strategic resilience also isn’t ‘bouncing back’, it’s bouncing forward and evolving in the face of adversity, so that the next shock becomes a positive inflection point instead of a major setback and uncertainty becomes a catalyst rather than a constraint.

"These are the muscles organisations need in order to build strategically, culturally and operationally. They’re not motivational posters on the wall. Better than that, the numbers back it up. In my MPhil research at the University of Pretoria, I found that these two core capabilities are deeply intertwined: strategic agility accounted for 48% of the variance in resilience scores. Firms that practise deliberate, rapid adaptation develop the muscle memory required to bounce forward, not just back," says Sibiya.

Our own local context intensifies the need for this dual capability. South Africa’s blend of infrastructural fragility, policy flux and talent migration compress reaction times.

When Eskom announces an unexpected shift to stage six power outages, manufacturers must reschedule production within hours. A surprise circular from the Prudential Authority can recalibrate capital adequacy models overnight, and a sudden dip of the rand raises import costs before the next board meeting can even convene.

Companies that treat agility or resilience as discrete projects struggle to absorb these hits. Those that internalise both report shorter recovery horizons, steadier cashflows and a brand reputation for reliability under pressure.

Emerging technologies amplify capabilities like strategic agility and resilience, but do not replace the underlying discipline required to sustain them. Predictive analytics and machine learning models convert torrents of raw data into early warning signals, while low-code automation shrinks the gap between spotting a risk and reconfiguring a process. Generative AI models can scan source code for vulnerabilities and recommend fixes in seconds and show how the right tool can help shorten decision cycles.

Despite the real gains to be had, technology remains the enabler, not the strategy. Without clean data pipelines, clear decision rights and cross-functional accountability, even the most advanced stack will only digitise outdated processes. Governance and culture must take precedence to ensure that every tech investment reinforces a lived ethos of adaptability.

It's time for culture to lead the way. Teams should treat change as the natural order of business, and leadership needs to prove that point by celebrating experimentation and encouraging people to learn out loud and running quick after-action reviews, so each iteration lifts the next.

Of course, technical architecture matters just as much. Cloud-native platforms, modular product design and API-first integration allow resources to be reshaped swiftly whenever risk or opportunity emerges. Incentives then close the loop when executives and senior management are rewarded for enterprise-level outcomes such as speed-to-market and time-to-recover rather than silo efficiency.

Finally, intent turns into capability only when it is measured to track both the bounce and the build. In other words, how quickly momentum is regained and how effectively new value is captured in the aftermath.

Strengthening these muscles long before the next storm is essential. Organisations that normalise adaptability can sense threats earlier, seize opportunities faster and reshape themselves continually. Digital enablement delivers the greatest value when it reinforces the human capabilities of agility and resilience. The businesses that make this shift move from fragile to future‑fit because they treat volatility as a competitive proving ground. The next storm is already forming. The prep for it starts today.

This perspective is drawn from Fikile Sibiya’s MPhil thesis, titled: ‘The moderating effect of emerging digital technologies on strategic agility as an antecedent to strategic resilience in an uncertain and volatile business environment.’