Redefining Resilience

Resilience. We aren’t born with it, nor is it innate; however, through generations of experience and our willingness to survive, humans have developed a propensity to adapt or persist in the face of adversity. Each crisis or tough circumstance acts as a trial that enables people and organizations to stretch their boundaries, learn to protect against new threats, and better prepare themselves for any new challenges going their way. 

​At Imperative Impact, we pondered over countless conversations around building back better and factors that make more resilient communities. We marvelled at the speed at which certain companies pivoted and restructured, whilst empathizing with the companies that struggled to keep afloat. As autumn approached and social distancing measures began loosening, our curiosity remained fixed on the topic of resilience and how its very definition is shifting as the world evolves. 
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For years, resilience was seen through an external locus of control lens. Reactively, we learned to spring back and recover from difficulties by riding the waves of stress, crisis, and uncertainty. Many organizations awaited changes week by week to slowly readjust to circumstances outside of their control. Conversely, the “resilients”, as coined by McKinsey, all had similar attributes: they proactively tackled pain points within their control, monitoring, deciding and executing on their own contingency planning. As a result, they were able to maintain flexibility around their own definition of resilience by taking ownership of any situation they were up against.

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What resilience means for organizations
We know that resilience is imperative for organizations as our society faces greater unpredictability and an increasingly dynamic business environment. More than the similar attributes, these “resilients” continue to share several deeper uniting truths: they embrace uncertainty within their strategies, prioritize collaboration and partnership, and have a distilled vision of their organization purpose.

• Resilient organizations embrace their relationship with uncertainty, enabling them to spot opportunities and threats and rise to the occasion with equanimity. By factoring in unpredictability as an inevitable component within all strategic plans, organizations have the adaptive capacity to face adversity should it arise. Companies that are still focused solely on creating and executing stable plans will face immense challenges when faced with the unanticipated volatility that is all too common in today’s business landscape.  
• These organizations prioritize and value the need for collaboration and partnership. Organizations can no longer survive as an individual player; as this pandemic has beared witness, every business environment functions successfully as an ecosystem. The suppliers, customer base, social systems all play a role in dictating how well each player can withstand the changing conditions. 
• The most resilient organizations have a clear mission and purpose that enables them to pivot at a moment’s notice to best fit their market’s needs. Clarity and a strong sense of their corporate stake enables leaders to navigate an intentionally-organized system. Having a strong internal system will also underscore the difference between enduring and ceasing organizations. Businesses are only as resilient as their weakest link. 
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Developing resilience within your organization
Going headfirst into the face of adversity enables us to test how resilient we are. However, there is opportunity to work from the inside out and develop the elements of a long-lasting system before we find ourselves in the eye of the storm. Here are 4 elements to consider within your organization:

1. Redundancy
   Redundancy boils down to understanding your brand well enough to clearly go through the weeds and understand what’s needed and what’s superfluous. The most efficient machines run without too many features hindering their performance, and within their design, optimization is achieved when nothing more can be taken away. By proactively refining your organization’s goals and offerings, the process helps you distill to your core why and through that, achieve your perfect balance of nothing more, nothing less. 
2. Adaptability
   We often talk about the more agile business coming out on top due to their ability to pivot faster. The ability to be an adaptive organization designed for flexibility and learning is key, and culture plays a big role in this. Companies with growth mindsets are quick to find new ways to become relevant in a changing environment. Whilst there are many different ways to go about shifting towards a growth mindset, at the core of it all, it requires the deliberate decision to systematically start promoting and challenging your organization’s status quo. It means embracing the ‘power of yet’. 
3. Risk Management
   In the world of business, ‘failing fast’ or ‘failing forward’ have become buzzwords synonymous with an agile culture. However, there is danger in intertwining language such as ‘fail fast, fail often’ with our true intentions of creating an agile work culture. Though unpredictability is inevitable and always part of the equation when developing your strategies, rather than leaning towards failures, it’s more understanding where your risks lie and how to navigate them should they arise. Even in the most innovative scenarios, there is an opportunity to build contingency plans and stress tests. Ultimately, it’s by leading through risk and planning for all potential scenarios that we can determine where we can fall and take it as a learning experience, or merely just allow failures to become unplanned mistakes.
4. Embeddedness
   Within systems thinking, embeddedness is the understanding that resilience can only be increased through collaboration with other players. By aligning your company’s goals and activities with those broader systems sets a foundation for how you can continue to meet emerging, evolving, and longstanding needs within that ecosystem and take on a leading or supporting role when the time is right. This pandemic has been proof of how seemingly unrelated industries can be of great benefit to each other as our areas of influence continue converging. More than anything, this year has the opportunity to shift our thinking to always think about opportunities outside of our direct impact, and how even the smallest business can benefit from thinking about themselves as part of a much bigger picture.  ​
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How We Can Help
Whereas resilience has long been seen as something that is developed over time after facing adversity, here at Imperative Impact, ​

we strongly believe that resilience involves behaviours, thoughts, and actions that anyone can learn and develop. ​

Indeed, no person or organization is born with it, but it’s something that can be worked on starting today. Any person can learn to be more resilient, and by that same token, any organization can also increase their resilience with the right intentions and mindset. 
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Building resilience requires a roadmap. Risk management, collaboration, and shifting towards a more agile work culture are all plausible steps to take on the journey to become a more resilient organization. However, each organization’s road to resilience can differ immensely, but taking a proactive stance and approaching from the inside out can increase your capacity to weather and grow from difficulties within that journey. Take the first step today, and ask yourself these questions: what is our biggest missing piece in our resiliency strategy? Is it within our culture, our current network structure, or within our existing risk strategies? How will we embody our mission tomorrow, in 1 year, in 5 years? And what new needs might emerge that can inform how we meet our mission tomorrow, in 1 year, in 5 years?
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Resilience is more than just a way to mitigate risk, it offers an opportunity for competitive advantage for those who choose to focus on it. We can be a partner in your journey in identifying and embedding those behaviours, thoughts, and actions that can enable your organization to emerge more confident and courageous. Let’s connect today.

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This is part of Imperative Impact’s Redefining Resilience series, which explores the building blocks that create a more inclusive, collaborative society. Join us as we engage in thought-provoking dialogue and unpack the questions around what it means for us to build back better from this global pandemic.

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