Building Resilience in Uncertain Times

In an environment where volatility is unrelenting and risks extend well beyond finance, the remit of the CFO has become that of an enterprise risk leader. At a recent India CFO Forum session inMumbai, Rajeev Gupta, CFO of L&T Technology Services and Surendra Goyal, Global CFO of Birla Carbon, drew on decades of experience to examine how organisations can strengthen resilience. They highlighted that the real task for finance leaders today is not only to manage balance sheets but to anticipate shocks, eliminate known risks, prepare for the unknown and embed risk awareness deep into organisational culture.

The attached podcast summarises these discussions, but briefly:

• Today’s CFOs are enterprise risk leaders, tasked with anticipating and mitigating financial, operational, regulatory, ESG, cyber and reputational shocks.
• Known risks (compliance, forex volatility, credit exposures), can be eliminated or controlled. Unknown ones (pandemics, regulatory shocks) demand planning, contingency reserves and cultural readiness.
• Building resilience requires balancing speed and caution: when to respond instantly and when to pause, gather intelligence and avoid fuelling misinformation.
• Effective risk management is about mindset and culture as much as systems.
• Resilience stems from diversification—of supply chains, investors, financing structures, even information – allowing organisations to withstand disruption.
• CFOs hold a central role in shaping organisational culture, training frontline leaders and embedding risk awareness across teams.