It’s easy to talk a good game in tech consultancy. Slide decks are polished, ideas are impressive. But what happens when theory meets the unpredictable reality of running a business? Steve Jobs once noted, “You don’t truly understand a business until you’ve had to clean up the mess.” The only way to avoid ‘the mess’ is to plan and act strategically. And strategy only delivers measurable ROI if you stay for the hard part, writes David Thomas, Head of Cyber Resilience at ITHQ.
Why staying for the Tough Bit Matters
Measurable technological and operational resilience does not happen in brainstorm sessions. It happens in the messy middle. When consultants are involved in the implementation process from start to finish, are there to work through difficult trade-offs and unseen legacy issues; that’s when genuine progress is made.
By standing inside the actual work, next to the people who’ll live with the outcomes, true resilience partners help you:
- Spot weak points before they become failures
- Build habits of discipline and accountability, not temporary fixes
- Collaborate to turn strategy from words into something tangible
This willingness to commit - to stay accountable until real change has taken root - gives rise to outcomes that last. Organisations move from simply surviving audit season to thriving through uncertainty. Here is where your business shows its resilience.
Resilience is not a Compliance Exercise
Over the years, too many organisations have come to equate resilience with compliance. They prepare for annual audits, tick boxes, and hope that covering broad measures will shield them from disruption. In reality, compliance is rarely enough. The world is full of compliant businesses that still spiral into crisis when the unexpected hits.
True resilience means being ready for more than a yearly review. It’s the day-to-day ability to withstand shocks, adapt to rapid change, and keep delivering when circumstances twist. Planning only for compliance leaves hidden weaknesses, just waiting for the right storm to cause chaos.
The data is sobering. According to Gartner, businesses without an integrated IT strategy are 40 percent more likely to overspend during outages or incidents. The price of reactive firefighting isn’t just measured in pounds, it’s measured in lost trust, stalled innovation, and teams locked in survival mode.
The Costly Hamster Wheel of Skipping Strategy
When businesses treat strategy as an optional extra, the hamster wheel on which they spin is painfully familiar:
- Recurring spend on last-minute fixes
- Teams stretched thin by constant surprises
- Leadership bogged down in never-ending emergencies
No strategy means no target. No target means no way of measuring improvements. Isolated successes may happen, but only by luck rather than design. Energy and resources pour into plugging holes, rather than building something lasting.
Perhaps the most damaging cost is the loss of confidence; the sense that the business can never move beyond its next crisis. Without robust strategy, resilience remains an illusion and every new risk feels like a threat rather than an opportunity.
Resilience is a Strategy: Plan for that
Organisations that plan for resilience, across operations and technology, are better equipped to face the future. They spend less patching up the past and more investing in what’s next. Resilience isn’t a report card, but a lasting advantage and it is only achieved by teams working together, uniting their particular strengths.
The question isn’t whether you want to look good in the boardroom or the audit, it's whether you want your business to keep performing when the pressure is on. Strategy that remains on paper is just good intentions. True strategy stays for the hard part - and that’s where resilience is made.
