[MARTIE-LOUISE VERREYNNE] My son, Nick, competes in Olympic style wrestling.

Like any parent, I have spent many hours and days watching him train and compete,
nursing
bruises and often looking the other way to give myself a break from the intensity
of
the competition.
What I have learned is that wrestlers know they are going to get hurt.
They anticipate it, and sometimes allow it in order to improve their position on
the
mat.
In other instances they have to move to avoid getting into a precarious position or
pivot,
to avoid a move before it is attempted.
They move fast, take punches and come back swinging.
Just like wrestlers, organizations often have to take punches and come back
swinging.
Just like wrestlers, they have to be tenacious.
When organizations are tenacious, we say that they have organizational resilience,
that
is, a ‘continuing capacity to recover from disturbances as well as the capacity to
rebound
from adversity in a strengthened and more resourceful way’
In a changing world packed with risks and opportunities, organizations need to be
resilient
to navigate the unknown.
To build resilience takes practice, discipline, and a commitment to change.
Resilient organisations exhibit a range of traits, some shared with innovative
organizations.
Some of these traits are part of the DNA of an organization, such as: Enterprise
risk management;
Business continuity capabilities; and Security.
Others need to be developed and include:
anticipation, slack, innovative problem-solving, improvisation, flexibility,
connectedness,
adaptiveness and pro-activeness.
To better understand how resilient organizations respond to uncertainty, we studied
400 businesses
on the Queensland oil and gas fields.
These businesses went through a boom and bust period as a 40 billion dollar
investment in
regional Queensland to produce coal-seam gas for export was followed by a
maintenance stage
where investment and employment dramatically dropped.
We found that the top performing 25% of organizations were more likely to have
above average scores
in all aspects of resilience.
Most importantly, the top performing organizations were adaptive - they had the
ability to shift
and reconfigure to meet new challenges in a swift and adept manner.
To support adaptiveness, they had flexible structures, process and practices that
allowed
them to respond to changing and ambiguous circumstances.
Top performers were connected.
They worked closely with network partners to address challenges, but they were also
tuned into changes so that they were able to anticipate shocks and opportunities
through
active monitoring and adjust.
They were therefore less likely to be caught off-guard.
Being tuned into their uncertain environments meant that they pro-actively looked
for investments
and strategies to gain competitive dominance, that they used unique approaches to
problem-solve
difficult and unexpected problems, and that they improvised viable solutions and
workarounds
- making the best use of available resources.
Importantly, resilient organizations used spare staff and financial resources
wisely.
They did not spend it frivolously, but reassigned it towards innovative activities
that supported
their ongoing performance.
Resilient organizations and innovative organizations share essential capabilities.
They are able to anticipate and learn proactively.
They don’t wait for the big signal, the major event to occur.
In fact, innovation requires disruption.
The behaviors that organizations must exhibit to be both resilient and innovative
are the
opposite of how management often expects people to behave when seeking to optimize
business
outcomes.
Organizations tend to reward those who do things more productively – thus meeting
financial goals more efficiently.
While they look like they are doing a great job, they may be eroding the basis to
be resilient
and innovative in the face of surprise.
Hamel & Valikangas suggest that to be both innovative and resilient, business need
to:
Conquer denial, that is, be curious, find out who in your organization understands
the
impact of change on your business model, realize others will replicate your
strategy, and constantly
examine the premises upon which decisions are based;
Value variety and experiment to try out different approaches;
Make a direct investment in resilience practices;
Resource those who can take new ideas to market; and reward both exploration and
exploitation,
not just the latter.
Resilient firms can handle today’s uncertainty, but they also continue to evolve to
deal with
future uncertainty.
Resilient firms stick with complicated problems, and often solve them with
innovative solutions.
As Albert Einstein famously said: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I
stay
with problems longer”.