If you ask one question this week make it this one:

Q: How resilient were we over the past 18 months and how can lessons learnt help us to deal with future disruption?

A: Disruption comes in many guises, but rarely do as many businesses face as much disruption from the same source as they have over the past year. The need to adapt and develop at breakneck speed has been challenging, but many have found opportunities to experiment with processes and tools. Now we must reflect on these, work out what we are doing currently and what we still need to do to work more effectively in future – whatever surprises this holds.

Change is exhausting and it’s important to celebrate what you have achieved – whether this is simply staying on track and helping your organisation to survive, or whether you have been in the fortunate position of being able to take up new opportunities to work differently and offer a wider range of more targeted internal audit work. Most will require a period of reflection to assess what has happened and to give the team a chance to recharge and appreciate what they have done well.

However, it’s equally important to use this time to look ahead. Hold on to that sense of momentum and excitement and ask how you can “bottle” the lessons you’ve learnt to carry you, your team and the wider organisation through the next wave of disruption. A global crisis raises baselines, exposes weaknesses and shifts established norms. It’s too early to say what all the long-term effects will be. We need to wait for more dust to settle – some consequences will emerge gradually over the next few years. Meanwhile, other disruptive forces will not hang back to allow us time to think and reflect. Some already loom on the horizon.

So, take a deep breath, reflect and analyse past lessons: What are you doing differently? What effect has this had on your team, on its work, on stakeholders and on your business? What are peers and internal audit teams in other organisations doing – and can you learn from them? How has the disruption of the past 18 months affected your team’s opportunities to work differently, and what skills, people and resources do you need to develop these? What risks have emerged, within the internal audit team and across the business, and what needs to change to address these? Are you better or worse prepared for future disruption, from whatever source, and can you make yourself more resilient?

After any period of rapid change, we need to pause – but don’t take too long about it. 

This article was first published in July 2021.