Building A Resilient Organisation

As we collectively take pride in the success of Chandrayaan-3, it is worth reflecting upon the years of toil that must have gone behind it to make it happen. The core team behind the mission must have spent sleepless nights, let go of other opportunities, and stuck around through years of uncertainties. We can only wonder about how many hours they had to put in and the failures they had to overcome.

The Indian EV industry has also faced similar uncertain and difficult times in the last few months, with the recent changes to the FAME II subsidy. At Ather, we have had to grapple with ambiguities and work through problems for which we had neither budgeted the bandwidth nor the capacity. Can our products stand the test of a changing market landscape? How do we change our pricing strategy in line with the subsidy? How do we maintain the trust of our stakeholders?... These are just a few of the questions for which we had to rally together for solutions. ?

Despite curveballs being thrown at us, we’ve had people dedicatedly working when it would have been easy to blame others - the government, the industry, our competitors - but we didn't waste time playing the blame game. Instead, we stuck to our values of Solving and Being part of the Solution. We put our heads down and worked; we formed swimlanes (cross-functional teams) and found solutions for the problem. Whether we wanted to participate in the gossip zones or the war rooms was up to us, and we chose the latter.?

A large part of Ather’s workforce has joined the organisation in the last 12-18 months, most of whom haven’t witnessed a single end-to-end product development cycle. New to Ather and without any firsthand experience of how the organisation has dealt with challenging situations in the past, this cohort experienced choppy waters in their initial months with the organisation this fiscal year. At the same time, we have tenured folks in the organisation who have witnessed us dealing with uncertain times, either in the initial start-up years or in the COVID years. These are our warriors; they know the DNA of the org and continue to show their faith in the system. It is reassuring to see some of them offer that much-needed scaffolding and context to newcomers by sharing stories from the past, sharing expectations of new roles, and being present and visible in the organisation.?

All of this becomes possible because of an elusive and often forgotten attribute called resilience.?

What is Resilience and why is it important to build Resilient Organisations?

I was in conversation with a peer from the industry and discussing the product launch of a new entrant in the EV industry. He had hoped for them to come up with something disruptive and norm-challenging, but when their product was finally launched, it was quite disappointingly off-the-shelf. I wasn't surprised because the organisation, to me, doesn’t display characteristics of one that is ready to put out a disruptive product in the market. They had never displayed the willingness to go deep into product development, invested in hiring and development of first principle thinkers, or stood by their team during times of failure.

Disruption is something the world sees as a magical end outcome; something that challenges the status quo, exciting, path-breaking. But what are the characteristics of an organisation that allow it to put out disruptive products? How can we build such an organisation??

I believe that the ingredients that go into building disruptive products or ecosystems are not something fashionable or fanciful. They are the boring old-fashioned attributes that our grandmother’s stories have been speaking about for a long time - Resilience, Patience, and Focus.?

• Resilience is the ability to adapt, bounce back, and recover from adversity, challenges, or setbacks consistently.?
• Patience is a form of tolerance where one is willing to accept setbacks without complaining.?
• Focus is the ability to be fully present and immersed in the task.

Together, these attributes help build organisations that can iteratively focus on design thinking and product development and, more importantly foster safe spaces to share ideas, encourage creativity, and build collaboratively.

Building Resilient Teams

Organisations that succeed with disruptive product development often foster a culture that allows failures and a willingness to learn from failures. It is the kind of culture that is not attracted to quick solutions, hustling, and immediate gratifications from the industry. Such a culture has two things baked into its foundation - resilient teams and a lasting commitment from the leadership.?

Resilient teams build excellent products and have people who are committed to the vision of the organisation and are willing to go the long haul. They have seen the good and bad days of product development. What makes them repeatedly successful is having the building blocks of resilience - an appreciation for each other’s work, curiosity for ideas, and repetitive and collaborative efforts. They understand that there is no single superstar in their teams because everyone is needed to stitch together the best experience for the customer.?

Committed Leadership

For organisations that don’t have the elements of resilience but wish to build a disruptive ecosystem, it is important to take this as a starting point and to coach for resilience. A team may have a hundred ideas - all of them impressive - but they need to work together to be able to pick out those one or two feasible ideas and execute them in the best way possible.?

The story is built by a leadership team that’s committed to the long term. If the leaders are themselves looking for instant success, they will become jumpy or anxious during difficult times, allowing things to spill over. However, if they can contain and stay grounded, this is passed down to team members, becoming the DNA of the organisation.?

A simple way to understand this is through the analogy of cooking a soup - it may seem easy on the surface, but difficult to actually have the nuanced flavours coming out. Soup is not a cobbled-together mush, but a mindfully curated dish.?

Closing Reflections

An organisation displays resilience at two levels - the DNA that gets built over a period of time and an individual’s commitment to what the organisation stands for. Organisations can have stated values, but what becomes DNA is the way they make or avoid making decisions; who is blamed for failures and who stands by team members during tough times. Ask the Chandrayaan-3 team and I am sure they will say the same.?

Here’s to the ‘moonshot’ of building a resilient organisation that is comfortable with wear and tear and can dust itself off to stand and try again!