Organizational Resilience: Part 3

BH: Are there different forms of resilience? One would assume that a distinction would have to be made between resilience that relates to an event in the past and general resilience in relation to all that cannot yet be named.??

CB: Resilience is the ability to adapt flexibly to changing and often challenging constraints and contexts. Resilience then refers first to individuals responding by adapting their own behavior. This process also includes triggers, such as trauma. When enough individuals, and thus a team and an organization, have developed this capacity, it is called organizational resilience.?The term is currently being expanded, in light of poly-crises, to include stretegic sub-areas of organizations, e.g., financial resilience or supply-chain resilience. In the end, however, it is always about people reacting quickly and flexibly, having the appropriate framework conditions to be able to do so, and thus steering the organization.??Basically, once you have learned to adapt quickly, you will never completely forget how to do so again.????

BH: So resilience is actually like a muscle that gets stronger the more it is used.???

CB: Exactly. That's how it's described in literature. Resilience is a muscle, you can train it. This is countered by our desire for security (see Part 2). In view of the poly-crises and the complex globally interconnected world, however, that becomes difficult in today's world. At the beginning, I listed the influencing factors we have. I didn't even mention the climate crisis. It's going to be difficult with the security and predictability of our environment.???

BH: From the perspective of people or employees who are obviously not in a position where they have active influence to shape the company and make decisions: how can these people contribute???

CB: That's a good question. And one that can make us optimistic. I had said, yes, resilience refers to individuals and their adaptability to change.? But of course, a lot of what I've said so far is mostly about white collar. This stops already in the area of Grey Collar - the people who sit at the checkout at DM or Rossmann and at the assembly line can often influence their own reactions and, if necessary, their teams. The processes regulated on a large scale, however, very little.? But if you look at the first lockdown and the 2020 pandemic, cashiers at Rossmann and DM, for example, had to demonstrate an extraordinary degree of resilience. They were the ones who saw 4,000 people a day. The rest of us sat in our home offices, roughly speaking. You're talking about the cogs in the gears who have little say in the matter? Yes, that is how it is. ?

BH: It's exciting to see how social and political events shape and influence our society in such a way that the strongest impact comes from those who were previously thought to have little influence.???

CB: They also prove it over and over again. The system has not in fact collapsed.?