Business Management
September 15, 2025
GERO: a practical look at organizational resilience
Instead of just reacting to crises, it is important to build a culture of preparedness, learning, and adaptation
In recent years, the concept of organizational resilience has shifted from being merely an academic concept to a concrete requirement for companies, which face crises of different natures — from pandemics to geopolitical instabilities, including technological disruptions. The question that should be asked is no longer whether an organization will experience an adverse event, but when.
It is in this context that GERO (Organizational Resilience Strategic Management), a model that helps leaders structure actions in three dimensions — environment, organization, and people —, and in three temporalities: before, during, and after a crisis. The main differential is to transform resilience into a field of strategic management, rather than an improvised or isolated reaction.
In the environmental dimension, we seek to have a close look both externally and internally. This variable guides a company to systematically monitor the internal and external environments. In practical terms, it means tracking trends, identifying risks, and maintaining continuity plans. During the pandemic, for example, we saw the difference between companies that had standardized processes and strategic or financial reserves and those that had to improvise amidst the chaos. Here, an important provocation is worth mentioning: does your company have clear indicators to monitor risks and vulnerabilities, or does it still rely solely on leadership’s feeling?
In the organizational behavioral dimension, the aim is to bring understanding about how the company reacts and learns. Here, the focus is on the institutional capacity to anticipate and respond to crises, transforming each event into learning. This involves the systematization of communities of practice, focus groups for review of internal processes, continuous training, systemic communication with all involved in the production chain, risk simulations, and contingency plans. These actions allow the organization not only to react to unexpected events but also to transform the experience into continuous improvement, refining internal processes and strengthening decision-making capacity in complex environments.
A survey conducted by the consulting firm KPMG in 2021 showed that 73% of the Brazilian companies surveyed did not have adequate business continuity plans. Within this total, 40% were in stage 1 (without any formal continuity strategy), and 33% were in stage 2 (with some plan, but incomplete, as it did not cover all events that could affect operations).
The third dimension, the individual behavioral one, assumes that no strategy can be sustained without people prepared and, here, we are not just talking about technical skills, but about behaviors that allow people to face a specific crisis more assertively. Among these competencies are creativity, proactivity, innovative thinking, negotiation, cognitive flexibility, adaptability, systemic vision, and judgment capacity in complex scenarios. The development of these skills enables employees to act with autonomy and assertiveness in the face of adverse situations, contributing to the continuity of operations.
The GERO model reinforces that resilience needs to be considered at different times.
- Before the crisis: it is necessary to create financial reserves, structure continuity plans, establish strategic partnerships;
- During the crisis: it is important to activate contingency plans, intensify communication, reallocate resources agilely;
- After the crisis: lessons learned should be recorded and sustainable changes applied to strategic planning.
Working on organizational resilience is not just about reacting to crises, but about building a culture of preparedness, learning, and continuous adaptation. This requires clear indicators (response time, team engagement, operational redundancy) and, above all, active leadership in promoting values such as flexibility and cooperation.
Led by a strong assertive leadership, Alterdata Software is a good example. Considered by the market as resilient, the organization currently holds the fifth position among the largest software companies in Brazil.
Its CEO, Ladmir Carvalho, often encourages directors to constantly question the status quo, asking questions like: “What costs are there in doing what no longer yields results?”; “what routines can be halted without harming operations?”; “which products are no longer selling?”. With this “productive restlessness”, Alterdata has been growing systematically and contributing with innovations that make a difference for its more than 60,000 active clients.
In 2015, with the Brazilian economic recession and the imminent significant loss of clients, Alterdata created a “customer unhappiness measurement” system. It is a mathematical model of predictive analysis, which investigates daily 22 behavioral characteristics of its partners to improve customer service.
This risk control system has an effectiveness rate of over 90% and, in 2018, avoided about 35% of cases that could have turned into cancellations. The system ranks the most dissatisfied potential clients, sending important information to branch managers that helps them take proactive action. In 2024, this case became a book chapter by one of the most important marketing authors in the world: Philip Kotler.
Alterdata’s example shows, in practice, how resilience can cease to be just an emergency response and become a permanent and strategic organizational competence, exactly as the GERO model proposes. By anticipating risks with data, stimulating behavioral innovation in its leadership, and investing in continuous learning processes, the company has consolidated a proactive and strategic stance in the face of adversity. More than resisting crises, Alterdata has transformed vulnerabilities into opportunities for sustainable growth, which is the true meaning of organizational resilience.
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Who wrote this column
Denise de Moura
