Organizational resilience is "the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and adapt to incremental changes and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper."
It goes beyond risk management to a more holistic view of business health and success. A resilient organization is one that not only survives long-term, but also flourishes - standing the test of time.
Organizational Resilience is a strategic imperative for an organization to thrive in today's dynamic interconnected world. It is not a unique exercise, but it is achieved over time and in the long term. Mastering Organizational Resilience requires the adoption of excellent habits and best practices to deliver business improvements by building competence and capacity in all aspects of an organization. This enables leaders to take measured risks with confidence, making the most of the opportunities that present themselves.
Building a Resilient Organizational Culture
Current events teach us that crises and even disasters occur much more frequently than anticipated. The post-tsunami crisis in Japan and repeated tornadoes in the southern and midwestern United States demonstrate the vulnerability of modern infrastructure to the forces of nature. The Wall Street crisis, the subsequent recession, and the consequent disappearance of discretionary spending remind us that man-made disasters can be devastating in other ways.
The key not only to surviving these events, but to thriving during such upheavals, we argue, is human resilience. While human resilience can be viewed as a personality trait, collectively, groups, organizations, and even communities can learn to develop a 'culture of resilience' that manifests as a form of 'psychological immunity' or the ability to Rebound from the adverse effects of adversity.
Human resilience has been observed to be found in different types of individuals ranging from accountants to law enforcement personnel, and even former seafarers. After the first Gulf War, we saw the power of human resilience transform a burning and broken nation of Kuwait into a leading economic power.
Observations have led us to think that just as individuals can learn to develop personal traits of resilience, organizations can also develop a culture of resilience. According to the "Law of the Few" described in (Gladwell, 2013) book, The Tipping Point, it is believed that people are the key to leadership in a company, often front-line leaders, seem to have the ability to "tilt" the organization in the direction of resilience and serve as a catalyst to increase group cohesion and dedication to the "mission." They do this, it is argued, demonstrating four main attributes: optimism, decisiveness, integrity, and open communication.while serving as conduits and guardians of the flows of formal and informal information throughout the organization and that enjoy high credibility (ethos).
All of this can be learned, simply put, when a small number of highly credible people who serve as visible information channels demonstrate or 'model' the behaviors associated with resilience, we believe they have the ability to change an entire culture of an organization like others they replicate the resistant characteristics that they have observed.
Using the insightful and well-researched formulations of Bandura (1997), the construct of 'self-efficacy' is used as a framework to operationalize many of the aforementioned resilience attributes. Self-efficacy can be thought of as the belief in one's agency and the ability to be a catalyst for change. He argues that the perception of self-efficacy models key human behaviors:
- The courses of action people choose to follow How much effort did they make in certain endeavors? How long will they persevere in the face of obstacles and failures? Their resistance to adversity, If their thought patterns are self-hindering or self-help, How much stress and Depression experience in coping with the imposition of environmental demands - the level of achievement of which they become aware.
All of the aforementioned behaviors, which we believe are not only essential for resisting (developing immunity to) or rebounding from adversity, but are the foundation of a resilient organizational culture and can be used to build resilience throughout the organization.
Evidence suggests that optimism and self-efficacy can be learned by employing a simple but powerful organizational framework:
First, understand that people thrive with success. Create an environment in which you are successful, especially early in your career. Use a process of successive approximation in which success is achieved in tasks of increasing difficulty and general complexity.
Second, people learn by observing others. Assign new staff to successful workgroups. Let her begin to experience "vicarious success." Simply owning membership in successful or elite groups can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Elite universities and professional groups thrive on this principle.
Third, provide encouragement, support, and even mentoring. Research suggests that the single most powerful predictor of human resilience is interpersonal support.
Finally, using the latest finding from neurosciences, provide basic training on how to manage personal stress. In training programs, they refer to this as the development of "psychological body armor."
Here is how some companies have used resilience characteristics at the organization level:
Resilient organizations invest in their customer base. At a time when the travel industry was experiencing a dramatic decline in demand, American Express Platinum Travel Services sent a gift to loyal customers as a way of saying "thank you." These frequent customers were given several hundred dollars worth of travel-related items including carry-on luggage, an iPod, headphones, and a digital video camera.
Resilient organizations are innovative in times of adversity. Innovation typifies Apple. At a time when the music player and phone industries were turning their products into commodities, Apple introduced radically simple and beautifully designed products that remade the company.
Resilient organizations invest in their leaders. At a time when government agencies are increasingly demanding of their contractors, a government contractor gave 30 departmental managers two days off, at a location away from work, to attend a training program that taught resilient leadership skills as well as "Psychological Body Armor" (the latest advances in how to handle personal stress).
Resilient organizations invest at all levels of their workforce. In 2010, the Wisconsin Governor's Council on Fitness and Health awarded the Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Neenah, WI a Gold Medal for promoting the health and well-being of employees. Kimberly-Clark has pioneered occupational health promotion since the early 1980s by implementing truly seminal programs in fitness, nutrition, and stress management, not only for workers, but also for their families.
To say that we live in difficult times is an understatement, but the crisis can also be understood as an opportunity. Those who cultivate a resilient organization, we argue, will be better positioned to prosper when others falter.
What a resilient organization looks like and how it benefits
A resilient organization will demonstrate key features in the way it operates, adaptable with an agile leadership that governs robustly (Veliz, 2014).
A resilient organization will benefit from:
Strategic adaptability - giving them the ability to handle changing circumstances successfully, even if it means moving away from their core business.
Agile Leadership - Allowing them to take measured risks with confidence and respond quickly and appropriately to opportunities and threats.
A robust governance that demonstrates accountability across organizational structures, based on a culture of trust, transparency and innovation, ensuring that they remain true to their vision and values.
Bibliography
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy in changing societies. Cambridge University Press.
Gladwell, M. (2013). The key to success: The turning point. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España.
Veliz, F. (2014). Organizational resilience: The challenge of caring for people, improving the quality of life for companies. Editorial GEDISA.
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