Organizational Resilience Part 4

BH: If we now take a look at influences: How do the media, consumers, business partners, supply chain members, and stakeholders in general influence the building of resilience? What role does the increasingly intense transparency of the business world and the expectations that stakeholders have of companies play?

CB: That's an interesting question. Crises are a good training partner for resilience. The fact that we experience critical events at the same time challenges us. Up until 20 years ago, no one knew whether there was a flood at the moment and in which country, or whether the next pathogen would arrive the day after tomorrow. Today, you know three days in advance. This permanent exposure can train our resilience - or overstrain us. For some people, it causes them to withdraw further and further because of the constant uncertainty. They become more conservative and have an ever greater need for security, voting for corresponding parties. The other part uses the high trigger density as a sounding board for their personal development. The resolution of this tension is not yet over.

BH: We've talked about issues like the climate crisis, changing values, and volatility - are these the biggest challenges you should prepare for as a company and as an individual?

CB: The future of work is becoming more complex. Let's take the topics of automation and AI. AI innovations like ChatGPT are developments that come in waves. If we're honest, generative AI could replace 15 professions overnight. Strategically, organizations are not getting behind right now, I observe. Where do you invest, geostrategically or in AI, or when is it better to wait for the next wave? These and many other questions are on the minds of companies.

Another resilience issue is the changes in the world of work, e.g. remote working. Many had to first learn not so much how to operate the technology, but how to organize themselves, individually, as a team, as a company. These are challenges for HR and every manager. Another big issue for companies is the type of collaboration, i.e. what interaction principles do we have, cross-hierarchy, cross-area?

And the whole topic of new work, the type of collaboration and mindset remains a challenge in parallel to automation and AI.What demands do we have in terms of value systems: keyword diversity. It's in every value proposition and mission, but it's very difficult to live by. You can have multidiverse teams or introduce quotas, but the way we work together - how we behave, how we communicate, what language we use - all of that has to be communalized and learned. That often overwhelms the individual. And when it overwhelms individuals, it slows down an organization.

BH: And how do we prepare our organizations for that?

CB: It's important for companies to develop a high degree of flexibility and adaptability in their processes and structures, plus crystal-clear focus on goals, values and leadership. For the individual, relaxed driving on sight will remain important, as well as actively shaping the unexpected. How do I deal with the unexpected, what meaning do I find in it, what meaning does the company find in it, and how do we use chance or the unexpected for new and positive things. I also call that future mindset.

BH: We talked about resilience being a muscle that you can develop the more you experience and process experiences positively. At the same time, there's more uncertainty on the outside. As fast as the world around us is becoming, all we can really do is cling on and hope for the best - future mindset or not??

CB: True. Humans have been overwhelmed for a long time, because technology has far outpaced us. Social media, for example, is overwhelming us in purely biological terms. People get addicted to the dopamine kicks, the short intense stimulants. So they swipe all day. Every swipe: dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. Our brain used to release dopamine 5 times a day. Today, the brain is overloaded with 200,000 dopamine bursts a day: TikTok, Slack, Instagram, mail and zoom notifications, Snapchat, Tinder. It stresses homo sapiens.

Now we're also seeing AIs popping up for real for the breadth of the population, cue ChatGPT. We live with media that teaches us we can get an instant solution or product for anything, giving us something new to play with.

But, our brain stem is 5 million years old, about 300,000 years is Homo Sapiens. The brain stem controls our basic processes and has hardly evolved since then. Our newer control center, the frontal cortex is 70,000 years old. This system is now hit with the constant dopamine flashes that many people unconsciously or consciously experience as stress. Homosapiens is broadly lost with the ability to control that. That's why the trend toward less is more. We move to the country, have retreats, do yoga & meditation.?

Our biological basic equipment is not made for the technology. It will not be able to develop there in the near future - biologically. Possibly with man-machine interfaces.?That's why I mentioned the age of our brain. We should urgently relearn to be comfortable with uncertainty. In leadership development, we call that ambiguity tolerance.

BH: This idea puts the topic of resilience in a new light. Do you see light on the horizon??

CB: My hope is that at some point we will all be so overwhelmed biologically and mentally that we will start to let go of this insane need for security and external clarity. If we look at climate change, in 20 years, nothing will be certain. The same goes for geostrategic issues or technological development. The realization that I know I don't know everything and that our brains are overloaded with technology in places can lead to focus. I can focus on what is important to me and what I want to move right now for myself, the organization and others. In my own focus and ability to have inner clarity, I can develop expertise.?

BH: Here we could make a good connection to the future of work. Because we know that employers are looking for people who are generalists, but at the same time have their own specific expertise through which they can make a unique contribution. But that's a topic for a next conversation. Thank you very much, Christina!