Resilience
Mark Easdown writes about resilience. Individual, Enterprise & Ecosystem Strategy & Planning & Ways of working. Let’s explore some scenarios across individual resilience, ethical resilience & the resilience dividend. At the individual level, the global pandemic, economic downturns, recessions and increase in uncertainty and anxiety highlight the need for resilience. As Diane L Coutu “How Resilience Works”, (HBR May 2002) observes, resilient people have certain defining characteristics…
Article written by Mark Easdown
Individual, Enterprise & Ecosystem Strategy & Planning, Ways of Working
““The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.””
““Resilience is the capacity of any entity – an individual, a community, an organisation, or a natural system – to prepare for disruptions, to recover from shocks and stresses, and to adapt and grow from a disruptive experience.””
““Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will-then your life will flow well.””
“Kintsugi”: Kin meaning golden & tsugi meaning joinery, so “to join with gold”. In Zen aesthetics a different perspective emerges with broken ceramic pieces repaired using gold leaf and with great care thus highlighting the damaged history rather than hiding it. The object is given a fresh start, proudly wearing the flaws of its accident. Origins attributed to shogun of Japan, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408)
According to the Oxford English & Australian Concise Oxford Dictionaries, resilience is a noun, with key attributes;
Capacity to recovery quickly from difficulties, toughness
Ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, elasticity
Recoiling, resuming original shape after bending, stretching, compression, shock, depression
Yet, the quotations above highlight a unique resilient frame of mind: “strong at the broken places” & “a fresh start, proudly wearing the flaws” & “don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would”. Judith Rodin believes “Resilience isn’t an inherited characteristic, it really is a skill” which would then enable you “to prepare for disruptions”.
Let’s explore some scenarios across individual resilience, ethical resilience & the resilience dividend.
At the individual level, the global pandemic, economic downturns, recessions and increase in uncertainty and anxiety highlight the need for resilience. As Diane L Coutu “How Resilience Works”, (HBR May 2002) observes, resilient people have certain defining characteristics;
They take a sober and down to earth look at the reality of the current situation
They search for and construct meaning for themselves and others, they build bridges to a better and fuller future
They continually improvise, they imagine new possibilities & put resources to new uses
Are resilient companies filled of optimistic people? Jim Collins in researching “Good to Great” sought counsel of Admiral Jim Stockdale to learn more…
“You must never confuse faith that you prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be”
Admiral Stockdale was a pilot whos’ plane was shot down over Vietnam in 1965, he endured 7 ½ years of captivity and torture and a POW. He organised a system of discipline & communications with fellow POWs, refusing even under torture to offer his captors any intelligence. He earned the Congressional Medal of Honour. He observed the POWs who broke fastest where the ones who deluded themselves about the reality and severity of their ordeal, they were optimistic they would be out by next week, next month, Christmas ..
The Stockdale Paradox, is that in the face of hardship you must;
Maintain clarity about your reality ….. however at the same time … Find positivity and hope for the future
In turning around demoralised workforce or lagging business performance, executives and teams must maintain a sober analysis of current state and conjure up a sense of possibilities and brighter future states.
Constructing meaning out of circumstance, continually improving and staying future focus
Austrian psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor in his book “Man’s search for meaning” realised that to survive the camp, he created an imagine of himself delivering a lecture after the war on the psychology of the concentration camp to help others understand what they had been through, he constructed concrete goals and endured to deliver his vision.
In “Resilience: Hard won wisdom for a better life” by Eric Greitens, the story of Emil Zatopek shows us happiness and resilience can co-exist. In 1940 at age 18, he was forced by a coach at a Czech shoe factory to run his first race. Yet in adversity and during the race he discovered a love of running and a passion to succeed which set the direction of his life. Within 4 years he held Czech and world records. In the 1952 Olympics, he won the 5km and 10km and decided to run in his first marathon. He was an unorthodox runner, he wore his pleasure and pain for all to see, he crossed a line a winner in a world record time.
In our workplaces, mistakes are made, lack of frameworks and preparation, poor judgements and unintended consequences emerge. In “The Power of Ethics : How to make good choices in a complicated world”, Susan Liautaud gives us the following two real world examples and the need for frameworks around Ethical Resilience, the need for preventative measures, swift action and measures to recovery across leadership team and an organisation.
““Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better””
Natasha’s Law (UK) & Ethical Resilience
On July 17 2016, Natasha Ednan-Laperouse aged 15 boarded a plane at Heathrow with her father and best friend for a vacation in south of France, they stopped to buy breakfast at Pret A Manger. She meticulously examined food labels as he had allergies to nuts, sesame seeds, dairy & bananas, her father double checked the label and there were no warning signs around the store. Tragically Natasha suffers a severe anaphylactic shock, her medicines nor shots of epinephrine would assist, French paramedics rushed her to Nice hospital where she died.
Sesame seeds had been baked into the dough of the baguette, this was not listed on the package nor visible on the bread. In September 2018, a coroner’s court found Pret A Porter have previously received 21 other instances of allergic reactions, 9 of which involved sesame seeds. Pret A Manager director or risk and compliance testified that the chain had acted in accordance to the law, highlighting differing labelling rules for food prepared in-store and off-site. So, the chain had adhered to food-labelling laws but fallen short of a higher ethical standard.
In October, CEO issued a public apology and instigated wide spread labelling of individual packaging, posted full ingredients online, promised to respond to allergy-related incidents and vowed to work with government, charities, peers to improve the law which emerged in 2019 was known as “Natasha’s law”.
The CEO was asked by author what steps might have been taken to have built ethical resilience and recovery; his response acknowledged earlier labelling expense concerns, preparing food in-store was to deliver quality and freshness to customer, there had also been concerns about complexity in compliance and in-house labelling with many vulnerabilities and potential points of error in value chain. The CEO acknowledged they should have delivered more than the law required, they should have been proactive and once they saw missteps – they should have told the truth, taken responsibility and moved forward with a plan to recover.
Microsoft conversational AI bot called Tay ( T= Thinking, A=About, Y=You) & Ethical Resilience
In 2016, Microsoft launched a social experiment in Tay, with the intention that the more people chatted with Tay the smarter its learning and natural language would evolve. In less than 16 hours, a particular type of attack saw Tay posting thousands of racist, sexist and anti-semitic comments via Twitter.
Microsoft immediately deleted posts, took Tay offline and apologised for “unintended offensive and hurtful tweets .. which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay”. The company acknowledged it had not anticipated this sort of attack, but should have and outline lessons learned moving forward and the complexity of managing positives and negatives of AI systems.
The author highlights the very public cycle from resilience to recovery; Tell the truth, take responsibility and have a framework and make a plan to fix the problem or flaws.
Trends emerging at the start of the 21st Century have highlighted many crisis; pandemics, cyber-security attacks, storm damage, wildfires, systematic and structural failures that impact communities, cities & ecosystems. These trends can be amplified by;
movement of populations and urbanisation (stressing social cohesion, infrastructure and services)
complex adaptive & evolving systems, with both;
globalisation advancing and vulnerabilities for problems to spread quickly across the globe
climate change impacting fires, floods, storms & greenhouse gases
In response resilience is being studied across an ever-increasing landscape including: health & wellbeing, psychology, psychiatry, community & human development, change management & workplace, medicine, epidemiology, nursing, education, software and distributed systems, engineering. Infrastructure, economic development, environmental, leadership & strategy.
““In the twenty first century, building resilience is one of our most urgent social and economic issues because we live in a world that is defined by disruption. Not a month goes by that we don’t see some kind of disturbance to the normal flow of life.””
In her book “The Resilience Dividend”, Judith Rodin describes Resilience noting the thinking of ecology, engineering, psychology, systems thinking and adaptive cycles.
“Resilience is the capacity of an entity – an individual, a community, an organisation, or a natural system – to prepare for disruptions, to recover from shocks and stresses and to adapt and grow from a disruptive experience. As you build resilience, therefore you become more able to respond to those you can’t predict or avoid. You also develop greater capacity to bounce back from a crisis, learn from it, and achieve revitalisation. Ideally, as you become more adept at managing disruption and skilled at resilience building, you will be able to create and take advantage of new opportunities in good times and bad. That is the resilience dividend”
So, what attributes might an individual, community or organisation develop to be more resilient ?
AWARENESS : must be aware of strengths, assets, liabilities, vulnerabilities, the infrastructure, human and natural systems and a willingness to constantly re-assess, take in new information and adjust settings
DIVERSE: draw from a diversity not any core critical function (individual, organisation, community, capabilities, information sources, technical elements, people and ideas)
William Saito served as CTO of NAIIC and deeply involved in Fukushima power plant disaster with 2011 earthquake and tsunami. He maintains it was “group-think” that saw highly skilled and experienced engineers and administrators ignore warnings and place back-up generators in basement and susceptible to flooding.
INTEGRATED: The left hands must know what the right hand is doing & have alignment of goals, across systems, sectors, divisional or government silos. It needs to presence of feedback loops.
SELF REGULATING: these domains can withstand disruptions, anomalous situations and will not fail catastrophically. It is enhanced due to elements, planning or design
ADAPTIVE: capacity to adjust to circumstances, taking new actions, modifying behaviours, making improvements even before s disruption to avoid or mitigate effects.
The Vietnamese communities living in public housing in New Orleans had social and community networks in place for their >5,000 people which meant that roughly 80% had left the city before Hurricane Katrina arrived. The community showed resilience and adaptability in emergency accommodation solutions and then in the return, re-build and re-establishing of church and community.
The author provides a large number of real-world examples of what good looks like spanning: Readiness, response and revitalisation (which is a much fuller forward experience than just recovery), the need to get ahead of the threats (what can be reinforced? What can be practiced?), coordinated leadership and well-trained resources, acknowledging that a crisis will confound all plans and preparation and the importance of social cohesion – as friends, neighbours and colleagues are usually the first asked to respond.
The concept of resilience dividend has a dual meaning;
It shows the difference between how a disruptive incident, shocks, stresses affects communities / ecosystems who have made reliant-related investments & those communities who did not
Demonstrates the benefits to communities / ecosystems accrue such as jobs, social cohesion, infrastructure, equity , reduction of poverty and crime
Around the world, this co-benefit & resilience dividend is noted in the design of co-purposed infrastructure for example;
Amphitheatre, Cedar Rapids, Iowa is both flood control and an entertainment space & community gardens.
SMART Tunnel, Kuala Lumpur (SMART = Storm water Management and Road Tunnel) is a designed 3 section tunnel combining storm water flood drainage & motor vehicles on differing levels. In category 2 storms, which occur approximately 10 times pa, the tunnel transports both cars and flood waters in lower section. Whilst in category 3 storms, the road is closed and tunnel used for flood water flow.
Building resilience is key at the individual, enterprise and ethical levels. The resilience dividend is an important strategic concept.
In May 2018, the National Resilience Taskforce was established which sought to develop a national disaster mitigation framework to reduce the impact of disasters. A report emerged “Profiling Australia’s Vulnerability: The interconnected causes and effects of systematic disaster risk. As the report notes on page 41, “ More focus is needed on the intersections & interdependencies in the systems that support us, from local to global levels”
““We need to remember that the future is not pre-determined in any important sense. It is not an unknown land into which we totter unsteadily one day at a time, but an extension of the present that we shape by our decisions and our actions. The future is not somewhere we are going but something we are creating. We all have a role in shaping Australia’s future.””
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We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au
Article written by Mark Easdown
What does resilience and adaptability mean to you?
Common themes for 2021 off the back of the year we have had…resilience and adaptability. This article will explore what they mean (let’s get back to basics), how does it apply personally, how does it apply professionally and key practical tips to be more resilient and adaptable.
Common themes for 2021 off the back of the year we have had…resilience and adaptability. This article will explore what they mean (let’s get back to basics), how does it apply personally, how does it apply professionally and key practical tips to be more resilient and adaptable.
This all comes down to experience so keen to get your practical view and experience on this – what works and what doesn’t so we can share this as a community.
What does this mean?
Let’s go back to the basics, the dictionary.
Resilience is defined as:
the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
"the often remarkable resilience of so many British institutions"
the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
"nylon is excellent in wearability, abrasion resistance and resilience"
Adaptability is defined as:
the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions.
"adaptability is an advantage in the harshly competitive global economy"
the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose.
"this is a good example of the adaptability of listed buildings"
How does it apply to me personally?
Change is constant.
Being able to adapt to change and deal with things life throws at you (resilience) is critical to your happiness and success. That doesn’t mean that you are always ok or you are always having a good day. It means that you take what life gives you and make the best of it. Some days this is not easy, other days it is.
Adaptability allows you to proactive change based on a change in circumstance.
It means embracing the change and looking for the positives, opportunities and way to make the best of the situation. It’s an important skill in your personal life for the challenges that life will throw at us.
My mother always told me …life is not fair…which I didn’t like and thought maybe she was wrong but I have learnt this also to be true. Life throws its challenge at everyone – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – but it’s how you bounce back is your true sense of character. Everyone has a story, everyone has tragedy – so that doesn’t make you unique but your response determines the impact to your life – if you are resilient you bounce back / recover quickly.
Most of you will resonate with this BUT it takes some difficulty in your life for you to really know and appreciate how resilient you are. Your inner strength, what you can deal with and how you respond normally surprises you – so be kind to yourself and reflect if this is true for you.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
How does it apply to me professionally?
Managing organisational change – adapting, responding and showing resilience through change will make you a strong leader and role model in the organisation. It’s hard to find leaders that are happy to champion change. To be able to manage change well with your team you need to explain the why and how it impacts them and the team. Be a good communicator.
Leading by example & navigating your team through change – it ties into the managing organisational change but leading by example in words and actions and ensuring a clear message of leadership to your team. Teams go on a journey with change – people respond differently and go through various phases of responding to change as demonstrated by the change curve below. As a leader you are responsible to manage and help your team work through change to allow them to be both adaptable and more resilient.
“When something goes wrong in your life, just yell ‘Plot Twist’ and move on.”
Organisational change requires strong leadership, an ability to be decisive, communicate and take the employees on the journey with you. This is the role of the CEO and the leadership team and will define the success of a leadership team – the ability for them to make change and take the employees on the journey.
Practical Guide
At Whiteark we are all about creating practical guides and tools to apply for key principles. So see two below that we think are great for improving adaptability and resilience.
The 7 C’s of Resilience:
Dr Ginsburg, child paediatrician and human development expert, proposes that there are 7 integral and interrelated components that make up being resilient in Children that can apply to all of us – the detail is below:
Competence
People need to be seen when they are doing something right and to be given opportunities to develop specific skills. If people in business have a particular passion for something or aptitude for a specific skill, activity or sport, we need to recognise this and let them know we’ve noticed and encourage them.
Confidence
The solid belief in one’s own abilities is everything. As we teach and nurture, we build confidence. We need to be careful not to undermine confidence but develop it by pushing our team to achieve and creating age-appropriate opportunities for experiencing success.
Connection
When people are part of a community (class, team, club) they know they aren’t alone if they struggle and that they can develop creative solutions to problems. Close ties to family, friends, and building a sense of community at work can get team members sense of security.
Character
People need an understanding of right and wrong and the capacity to follow a moral compass. A fundamental sense of right and wrong helps people make wise choices, contribute to the world.
Contribution
The experience of offering their own service makes it easier for people to ask for help when they need it. Once people understand the feel-good factor of helping others, it becomes easier to ask for help when it’s needed – being willing to ask for help is a big part of being resilient. People who learn to cope effectively with stress are better prepared to overcome life’s challenges.
Coping
People need healthy coping strategies to manage their stress. Some strategies involve engaging and disengaging such as breaking down seemingly impossible problems and challenges into smaller, achievable pieces, avoiding things that trigger extreme anxiety, and just letting some things go.
Control
People need to feel like they have a degree of control over their lives and their environment. When they realise that they can control their decisions and actions, they’re more likely to know that they have what it takes to bounce back.
4 Ways to Boost Your Adaptability Skills
Change Your Thought Process. Let go of the “Well, that's the way we've always done it” mentality
Force Yourself to Take Risks. Little progress is made without risk. ...how do you encourage failure in our organisation and innovation as it’s powerful and important
Encourage Others to Be Open Minded. One of the best ways you can develop an open mind is to encourage others to do the same
Embrace Learning. Always learn from others, from situations and make the most of everything
Well it’s fair to say that resilience and adaptability are key skills to be successful in life and work – so very important.
These skills and the ability to be able to apply them in business will allow companies to respond to changes in market, customer and consumer expectations and unexpected financial or commercial issues that occur. Building a leadership team of resilient and adaptable people will be a key differentiator for an organisation.
Determine what kind of leader you want to be and be proactive in creating this. Start by having a think about what resilience and adaptability means to you? Join the conversation online by Searching for Whiteark on LinkedIn. Whiteark chat with a chief every week to learn from leaders in their field so if you want to learn from experienced leaders tune into The Chiefs podcast series.
At Whiteark we have hands on practical experience helping leaders to build resilience and adaptability. Please reach out for a no obligation conversation.
Whiteark is not your average consulting firm, we have first-hand experience in delivering transformation programs for private equity and other organisations with a focus on people just as much as financial outcomes.
We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au