My summer reading of the Cyber Commanders’ Handbook revealed insights on resilience, risk, and robustness that every entrepreneur can use.
Reading is one of my favorite pastimes, and it fuels my thinking as an entrepreneur. Besides reading magazines, I try to read books on various topics as often as I can.
This year’s summer reading was different than in other years. As an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, I transitioned into a new role and had to do some military-related reading.
I spent my summer holidays reading Cyber Commanders’ Handbook 2, issued by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn.
Dry military talk?
Technical cyber lingo?
Some of both, to be honest. However, the Cyber Commanders’ Handbook 2 also contains some excellent advice for entrepreneurs, regardless of whether you are in IT or not.
My Favorite Passage
In the chapter on cyberspace resilience, the Cyber Commanders’ Handbook presents a great distinction between risk, resilience, and robustness:
Risk-based strategies are most effective when hazards are known and their probabilities can be estimated. These strategies become problematic when hazards are unknown, interlinked, or difficult to estimate or when they can cause extensive damage, often indirectly, through cascading effects.
Resilience focuses on the ability of a system to continue to fulfil its purpose in the face of incidents degrading its performance and then recovering, irrespective of the cause. But using resilience successfully requires a good understanding of the mission and how it depends upon the system in question, e.g. the system’s boundaries and performance and the appropriate timeframe.
Robustness is another concept (besides risk) often confused with resilience. Robustness is closely related to risk. Robustness denotes the degree to which a system is able to withstand an unexpected internal or external threat or change without a degradation in system performance.
Doesn’t that resonate with the challenging times entrepreneurs operate in today?
What It Means for Entrepreneurs
Welcome to the Unknown
The times of known risks are over. The world in general and technology in particular move so fast that we are continuously confronted with unprecedented events. Just a few years ago, who would have thought of the risks AI poses? A decade ago, who would have foreseen the return to power politics? Nobody would have put those risks on their risk matrix just a few years ago.
From today’s perspective, don’t just put AI and power politics on your risk matrix and think you’ll be fine. The next set of big troubles for entrepreneurs is just as unknown as AI and power politics were a few years ago.
Work with What You Have
All organizations are resource-constrained. Risks and unforeseen events drain the limited resources even further.
What can you do with it? Absolutely nothing. Get used to working with what you have, and stop complaining that you need more resources. Because you won’t get any.
Great entrepreneurs start with nothing and build something out of nothing. Maybe that’s the reason why many great companies are born in times of crisis.
Work in Less-than-Ideal Conditions
In IT, we cherish the concept of graceful degradation: In simple terms, graceful degradation describes a system’s ability to maintain partial functionality when parts of it fail, instead of completely breaking down. In other words, even in the event of problems or failures, the system can continue operating at a reduced capacity, allowing users to still access essential features or services.
Isn’t this exactly what entrepreneurs need in difficult and unpredictable times? Instead of everything breaking down at one tipping point, we need to maintain the core functions of our organizations and our society even under adverse conditions.
If you’re able to keep calm and carry on even when important systems fail, key people leave, or markets collapse, you can safely put that risk matrix away.
