The Resilience Illusion: When Macro Performance Hides Micro Fragility

So in this episode, I want to take a step back from the daily flow of supply chain news and consider a paradox that has been exercising me for some time now.

So it seems that we're living through an extraordinarily volatile period.

We've got wars in Europe and the Middle East.

We've got renewed concerns about energy security.

We've got more protections, trade policies.

We've got issues with shipping routes.

sourcing relationships and production networks being reconsidered, and companies trying to cope with higher costs and labour shortages, as well as technological disruption and new regulation.

And yet, despite all of that, the global economy and international trade have held up remarkably well.

The IMF, for example, is currently forecasting global growth of around 3% in 2026, with somewhat even stronger growth in 2027.

And the World Trade Organization has also reported that merchandise trade remained resilient through the first half of this year, despite the geopolitical and energy-related headwinds.

So that said, the picture is uneven and the European economy remains a little bit sluggish.

But the system overall has absorbed an extraordinary succession of shocks without the general collapse that many people feared.

So how has that happened? Well, my contention in this episode is that much of what we are calling resilience here is in fact not resilience.

It's a different concept.

It's endurance.

Now, so companies have kept products moving and they've kept customers supplied, but they've been doing that by asking existing operations and existing management teams and existing people to absorb ever greater complexity with broadly the same capacities and capabilities.

And this has worked up to now, but it's consumed that hidden margin that made that performance possible.

And that means that many organisations are getting dangerously close to their limits.

So let me try to explain what I mean by the distinction that I'm making here between resilience and endurance.