Change is everywhere, in every market and unavoidable. You have to react to change, not only to survive but also to evolve. Are you ready for change?

The 18th Annual Global CEO survey by PwC has shown that about 60% of chief executives believe they have more opportunities today than three years ago. An equal percentage see more threats today. Indeed, 30% of CEOs see both more threats and more opportunities. Only 9% see both threats and opportunities declining.

It is often necessary for a company to take greater risk in a fast-changing and unpredictable environment -- and to acquire the ability to spot and act on emerging opportunities before competitors do.

To remain competitive in today's business climate, companies must pursue risk management frameworks that allow them to anticipate and prepare for the shifts that bring long-term success. They must also build resilience that will enable those frameworks to mitigate risk events and keep the business moving towards its goals.

A study by PwC identifies six distinctive traits that reflect the ability to anticipate and react to change. The first three traits represent mostly internal capabilities, or the organisation's ability to respond to change:

- Coherence, or the ability to make mutually beneficial decisions;
- Adaptive capacity, or the ability to reorganise for change; and
- Agility, or the ability to make and implement decisions at the required speed.

In practice, we can see an example in a company that tends to respond to feedback (adaptive), moves quickly when it sees the right signals (agile), and keeps the organisation focused (coherent).

The second set of traits represents the organisation's relationships with its customers, business partners and other stakeholders, which are equally important to its ability to respond to change:

- Relevance, or consistently delivering on stakeholder needs;
- Reliability, or consistently delivering to expected quality, on time; and
- Trust, or knowing how to create investment-worthy and rewarding relationships.

Relevance is particularly important at a time when disruption is expected. Some CEOs say that it is difficult to know when disruption will happen. Consequently, they prefer to be creators in order to manage disruption. No matter what happens, CEOs should not forget to build positive relationships to bring trust to the business.

You always have an opportunity to systematically build your enterprise. So let's start today.

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Written by Varunee Pridanonda, a partner for governance, risk, control and internal audit Services with PwC Thailand. For more information, please contact varunee.pridanonda@th.pwc.com.