How will your organization emerge from the current crisis? Some organizations emerge from difficult circumstances stronger. Resilience is important for organizations just as it is a valuable character trait in individuals. We define organizational resilience as the ability to emerge from difficult conditions stronger and more resourceful than before. These three evidence-based practices will support your organization if you want to lead it so that it emerges from this crisis stronger than ever.
Embrace change and be creative.
The world has changed. Distribution networks have shifted seismically. How we work will never be exactly the same. The channels we use to buy services have been completely disrupted. The breadth of this change creates both threats and opportunities for your current business model.
As a leader, you have a choice. You can acknowledge and name the change going on around us, and respond in kind quickly, or you can hope that things will soon go back to the way they were before, so that you can return to doing things as you have always done them.
Change can be challenging, even traumatic. This is where the skills of compassionate leadership are particularly effective. Compassionate leaders are aware of the impact of change on their team. Our research shows that team members and leaders are experiencing different emotions in the current crisis. Without an understanding of your team’s emotions, your organization’s ability to change will be hindered.
In addition, compassionate leadership creates psychologically safe workplaces and supports learning. It builds trust and cooperative behaviors which speed decision making processes.
One thing we know is that change is constant and will always be with us. Strengthen your ability to adapt to change in this current crisis, and you will create a permanent competitive advantage for your organization in the future.
Don’t believe your own press.
Don’t confuse a good outcome with a good decision. Resilient organizations celebrate their successes, but they are careful not to take it too personally. Even when things go well, events rarely unfold the way you planned. What can you learn from your successes? Did a good outcome unfold for the reasons you thought it would, or did you wind up with a good result for a completely different reason?
Ask your team to speak up with a variety of voices. Encourage analysis that points out the weak spots in your practices, processes, and structures. Ask which organizational beliefs need to be revisited based on the new information you are receiving. Test all your assumptions regularly.
Speed and agility are particularly important with the rapid changes in the world during this crisis. Does a new opportunity that opened up have legs? Are advantages that you have gained permanent, or temporary? Visit and revisit the landscape to scope and assess new territory and potential.
You don’t have to know where the world is going as the COVID-19 crisis resolves. What you do need is the flexibility to pivot and move as your industry moves. The only way to successfully do this is to learn continuously from what is unfolding during the crisis.
Take advantage of the chaos.
The current crisis is disrupting everyone. You can use this to your advantage. All of a sudden, existing competitive analyses have become stale, and everyone is experiencing a significant “reset.” How will you use these changed conditions? Do shifting distribution networks open an opportunity to get into a market that was previously out of reach? Do you have strengths now that become even more valuable, e.g., a strong balance sheet?
The current crisis also creates opportunities inside organizations. Resilient organizations regularly engage in creative destruction to move away from what is waning toward what is growing. Entrenched power groups are a major obstacle to this creative destruction. But when a major shock hits, things are shattered so clearly that the need to put them back together is unquestionable. As you lead the required rebuild, seize the opportunity. Make sure that people don’t simply pick up the pieces and put them back in the same place.
Being a truly resilient leader
Like all compassionate leadership principles, building organizational resilience starts from the inside out. Make sure you are building your personal resilience so that you can model and effectively lead your team and organization through these unprecedented times.
If you are particularly interested in the topic of organizational resilience, two recommended readings from the Resources section of our website are “The Quest for Resilience” and “Organizational resilience: Towards a theory and research agenda.”
Photo Credit: John McQuaid. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).