Organizational Resilience

As a student, I loved spending time in a boat on the River Cherwell. Our College rowing coach – a former Czechoslovakian Olympian (if memory serves me well) - was full of pearls of wisdom which he imparted as he cycled along the toe-path with speaker in hand, all to help move the boat faster. Many of his lessons were about building physical and mental resilience, and much of his effort was directed towards harmonising our energy so that we “all pulled together.”  

Covid-19 offers a moment in our lives to examine what has been called resilience. We can engage in positive mantras. We can downplay the extent of the pandemic for ourselves and others. We can try and sit curled up under the tree until the rain stops. Yet what does it take to not only get through the crisis but to rebound and maybe ever prosper?

Diane Coutu[1]  offers some profound and counter-intuitive thoughts on this topic. While conventional wisdom makes a connection between resilience and optimism, that turns out to be misleading.  Rather, Coutu found that resilient people seem to possess a combination of three elements. First, we must face the reality of the situation as it is and not masked with our hopes or demons. Second, by searching for meaning in an experience, often informed by a set of strong values, we increase our capacity to be robust under tremendous stress and change. Finally, by improvising (what the French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss called bricolage) and focussing on what we can do (rather than dwelling on what we cannot), we can keep bouncing back.  

At an organisational level, the same general precepts apply. There is little point in having individuals who are resilient if the whole organisation is not pulling in the same direction and adhering to the same values. Organisational resilience is founded on common values and common goals. Coutu cites a number of case studies in which companies made it through dire situations primarily because they took to heart their core values, which had been imparted to all employees. The idea is that resilience is something that can be cultivated, taught and learned. And this is something that we can all work on during these trying times.

And so here I am back to sitting in a boat with fellow rowers listening to our coach. 

[1] How Resilience Works Coutu, D., 2002. How Resilience Works. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2002/05/how-resilience-works>