The concept of resilience has gained a lot of attention in the past several years most notably because everyone one of us has been tested in countless ways, through several years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Understandably much of the focus has been on evaluating, building and sustaining personal resilience. However, the conversation around organizational resilience has also started to gain similar attention the more so, perhaps, as the strain on the capacity of various companies and sectors has become more and more noticeable in the past year. News stories and the reality of hospitals grappling with significant turnover in staff and resulting vacancies, supply chain issues that continue to plague the automobile industry, and the challenge that almost all organizations have faced in pivoting in response to new demands from both customers and staff. Organizational disappointments, failures and other shortfalls have become relatively commonplace and even expected in today's environment.
An interesting question was posed to me recently on organizational resilience, "How serious is the conversation and the follow-through on organizational resilience?" A provocative question. Unfortunately, my response reflected a reasonable degree of cynicism and view that too many leaders might be paying lip service to the very real need to attend to organizational resilience and to sustain such efforts on a long-term, consistent basis. In some ways, the issue of organizational resilience might fall into the same category as issues like black lives matter, diversity/equity/inclusion, the me too movement and other such events that gain a lot of traction and attention in the moment but whose momentum fails after a few short months. We have proven ourselves to have notoriously short attention spans on even critical issues, make large and glorious pronouncements, pat ourselves on the back, and try to get back to business as quickly as possible.
The consequences of a drive to get back to business as usual in current circumstances, however, is that we only further weaken and exhaust our organizational capacity and resilience. Paradoxically, if want to improve our business and organizational fortunes, leaders will have to go slow to go fast. Leaders will have to see assessment, development and sustainment of organizational resilience as a key strategic imperative for many years yet to come. All this begs some questions though - how does one measure organizational resilience and once a benchmark has been established how do you grow organizational resilience?
For now, let's start on the assessment side of resilience. There are a myriad of tools available for us as individuals to assess our personal resilience. These tools benefit from strong grounding in schools of thought informed by psychology and efforts to support individual mental health. I have yet to find as comprehensive or encompassing a tool that helps to assess organizational resilience. One option to address this gap is to consider the organization as its own living, breathing entity and extrapolate and modify assessment categories accordingly. The result might start to then focus on key areas of organizational health:
Core Values & Purpose - how well articulated, integrated and widespread are the organization's Mission, Vision, Values and Strategic Directions?
Organizational Decision-Making - to what extent does the organization consistently respond to adverse events in a proactive and constructive manner (versus reactive/panicked mode)?
Organizational Self-Care - what is the quality and range of initiatives that the organization has in place to build resilience and capacity in advance of any adverse event? In contrast to organizational coping skills, organizational self-care represents long-term and sustained investments in building and improving capacity in advance of adversity (e.g., business continuity, learning & development plans, succession planning, etc.).
Organizational Pride & Confidence - this may seem an odd assessment category, but it starts to reflect an investment in organizational culture that rewards and recognizes achievements, strengths and accomplishments of individuals, teams and the entire organization. The assessment focus can be supported in part through staff engagement surveys but also through evaluation of image/presence in the marketplace. What is the "personality" or reputation of the organization with its stakeholders?
Organizational Connectivity - this assessment category looks at the degree to which the organization supports not just information sharing but also collaboration and support between teams and different functions/departments within the organization. A similar effort and lens could be applied to the extent to which an organization is constructively connected and engaged with key external stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, funders, service partners and even competitors). What is the degree and quality of connection, collaboration and support that the organization can call upon in time of need?
Learning Culture - it is suggested that the key to this assessment category is primarily in how the organization handles mistakes, failures, missteps and even significant setbacks. Can the organization face these issues with some degree of organizational humility and with a focus on appreciating that every challenge has critical feedback and lessons that might have to be sought out and applied for future growth?
Each of these assessment categories are only as good at assessing organizational resilience as the nature of the questions posed and the degree of honesty and courage in addressing the areas under investigation. Like individual self-assessments, I recommend that the questions in each area not run to pages and pages but rather focus on the critical few and essential elements. Similarly, the organizational assessment should err on the side of simplicity so that it can be revisited on a regular basis (and not just annually or every few years). This ease and simplicity of use will better support the organization to keep its finger on the pulse of the organization and adjust its approach to building and sustaining resilience over time.
I have not addressed what to do with the results once obtained. How do you build organizational resilience? Space and capacity call for that to be addressed in a subsequent blog. At this point, I welcome you to explore the assessment thoughts posed above, critique them, trial them perhaps, and suggest other options for assessing organizational resilience.
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Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
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