Resilience
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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Article written by Mark Easdown
