The concept of resilience is powerful and intuitively appealing. We usually associate the term resilience with human behavior - particularly the ability to bounce back from unpleasant situations or conditions. However, in this post, I look at the idea of resilience within the business context. Then I suggest how to implement it.

The term resilience is difficult to measure as it is not a single ability. We are resilient to different degrees. As a concept, the resilient mindset engages and triggers qualities where simple willpower or bursts of energy fall short. There also appears to be systemic benefits that kick in more readily when resilience is embraced as a business concept. Some of the attributes are:

The people I surveyed who use resilience as a strategy in their companies use terms like 'bonding' and 'alignment' to describe what happened when they started using resilience as a strategy. Although these terms might appear cliched, I think they are powerfully descriptive. When it happens, many other organizational problems seem to get addressed in the wash. For this reason, I decided to share and explore how and why it works.

The concept of resilience is usually associated with crisis management and the business's ability to adapt to change and respond to risks (natural disasters, cyber-attacks, supply chains, and disruptions). Given that we are in the middle of the Covid19 pandemic, it is natural to explore the best business strategies to succeed.

From our perspective of 'performance,' we want to understand how useful the notion of resilience is in environments where change is constant. From this perspective, we define resilience as a company's successful capacity to adapt, despite challenging or threatening circumstances.

The process that leads to a successful outcome requires a strategy that considers how the business environment is changing.

The implication is that businesses need to make significant changes to their objectives, processes, thinking, and how to measure value within this new reality.

I see resilience as an unfolding process that is time and context-specific. Not as an identifiable inner personality trait.

If we link 'unfolding' with 'adaptation' it becomes a useful and unique process or mechanism to guide change. It is not top-down, but it is a unifying, explorative, and dynamic (on your feet) energetic process that facilitates growth. The company becomes a learning system in action - learning in real-time. Many of the problematic barriers seem to disappear; people unite naturally behind a positive cause to save and make things better. Psychologically, it is potent and easy to see why bonding and alignment are the right words.

How to implement resilience?

Once the idea of resilience is recognized as beneficial and applied, we must understand that using resilience should not be done as a band-aid/fixing the symptoms approach.

The biggest problem I have seen over the years repeatedly dealing with various businesses is the patchwork approach to solving problems. People do have a problem with understanding holism. This inability is fundamentally the BIG cause of many issues (business and society). If you can sort this out, you are 85% of your way towards the solution.

s it able to participate and make its group remain resilient and do what it does best? You might ignorantly say it is just one ant. You know what the comeback is - do it sufficiently ant by ant, and there will come a tipping point moment, where it will be too late. I urge people to wake up - you are human, and you do not live on an island. Re-learn to be human. Humans are social systems where co-operation is in the DNA for survival.

The rise of individualism is problematic. Business as a conceptual model can only function when there is coherent unity. If self-centeredness is the individual worker's mindset, then we have a problem.

I wholeheartedly subscribe to complex systems notions, and complex adaptive systems are vital to managing companies. I play it down for the simple reason that many people shy away because it comes across as jargon. So, I resort to a more straightforward language. I do use these concepts quite explicitly elsewhere for those interested.

From here, the recommendations are obvious:

'Resilience' cannot be treated as something that is occasionally used to fix a problem. It needs to be considered as an opportunity to build a business that remains resilient. All companies are part of a bigger world. That world has many players and moving parts. Pandemics might just have become a more frequent variable that needs to be considered.

Resilience provides a competitive advantage, primarily when you aim to manage to facilitate high performance.