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Learn to be a resilient organization

How resilient is your organization? Are you adapting to massive shifts such as the aging workforce and rapid changes in health care? How well would your organization fare if struck by a disaster?

These challenges test an organization's resilience and its ability to respond and adapt to sudden changes. A resilient organization maximizes performance over the long term.

What is resilience?
There is a challenge because the abilities required for resiliency conflict with performance and optimization goals. These goals place a high value on consistency, efficiency and waste reduction. Managing for adaptation, in contrast, requires experimentation, innovation and variety -- all of which can be perceived as wasteful in a pursuit for maximum return on investment.

A resilient organization accepts the paradox of this conflict, embraces both objectives and can move nimbly between the two. To succeed in the long term, organizations need to both maximize performance and prepare for adaptation. Rather than solely tune for greater efficiency, a successful organization should be able to grow and adapt to changing conditions.

The key strategies for organizations to operate in this paradox are principles for both the organization and its employees. In fact, organizational resilience depends, in large part, on resilient employees -- managing and allowing them to manage themselves for focused productivity and adaptive innovation.

What are strategies for becoming resilient?
Researchers have looked at the factors associated with long-term success in the face of change -- why some organizations survive and even benefit from change while others don't. The findings can be grouped into six related strategies:

Face down reality. Getting past denial is step one in a resilient response to change. If you don't recognize that something is challenging, you can't respond to it. Resilient organizations seek out and examine potentially disturbing information to test their understanding of reality.

Encourage innovation and experimentation. Resilient organizations increase their opportunities for growth by engaging in widespread experimentation. They welcome innovation and small-scale experimentation from employees who are knowledge experts.

Build in flexibility. Resilient organizations put flexibility into operations by building trust and commitment among employees, suppliers and customers. Employees are cross-trained to think on their feet when it comes to change and find ways to accomplish work when, where and how it makes the most sense.

Strengthen and broaden networks. Highly networked communications and decentralized decision-making are critical to success in quickly changing situations. Resilient organizations know when to rely on hierarchy for decisions and when to push them to the experts within the company.

Build a sense of purpose. Employees are more engaged in work and more likely to respond energetically and creatively to change when they share the organization's values and are committed. A shared sense of purpose helps ensure that employees make good choices when decision-making is decentralized.

Minimize emotional trauma. Resilient organizations need healthy, engaged and focused employees during times of change. To build these reserves, the organization can help employees learn to be more resilient. It can also help managers improve skills and hire for the skills needed.

Learn more
Building Organizational Resilience, a new executive strategy paper from Ceridian, summarizes research and current thinking on resilience, with ideas and specific strategies for strengthening it.

Get your complimentary copy today.

Sources
1) Diane L. Coutou. "How Resilience Works." Harvard Business Review, May 2002.
2) Gary Hamel and Liisa Välikangas. "The Quest for Resilience." Harvard Business Review, September 2003.
3) Yossi Sheffi. The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005.