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Welcome to your exclusive Mind Tools member newsletter, designed to help you survive and thrive at work. Each week, you’ll find personal insight and advice from the mindtools.com editors, and from our network of thought leaders, researchers and coaches.
This week, we’re focusing on organizational resilience – what it means, why it’s useful, and how you can build it within your organization.
Then scroll down for our Tip of the Week on "just doing it," the latest update from our popular Pain Points podcast, and our News Roundup.
Preparing to Bounce Back
By Melanie Bell, Mind Tools Content Editor
Many of us have been through challenges and bounced back, sometimes stronger than before. Other times, we’ve found that tough situations resulted in more pain than growth. Organizations are the same way. Some struggle to adapt to change, while others are rejuvenated by it.
What makes the difference between flourishing in the wake of a challenge and floundering? What factors make an organization resilient?
What's Resilience, Anyway?
As part of my ongoing training at work, I’m taking a course on neurodiversity and inclusion. It’s grounded in positive psychology, an approach that focuses on the factors that help people (and systems and organizations) to thrive. One of our lectures focused on resilience.
Helpfully, it began with a definition. Our lecturer, Positive Psychology Guild founder Reece Coker, described resilience as “the ability to rebound following a stress stimulus.” The term is rooted in the Latin “resilire,” which means to recoil or rebound.
Think of a spring that’s pressed down and bounces back, resuming its original shape. Does your organization respond this way under stress, or does it remain bent?
Resilience is a form of adaptability. When something goes wrong, resilient organizations respond more quickly and proactively. This facilitates growth.
5 Best Practices for Organizational Resilience
A study on Organizational Resilience by BSI and Cranfield School of Management presents five best practices for building resilience in organizations. These are useful to keep in mind when building your company culture and planning strategically. They include:
- Prioritizing reliability. Recognize that things can go wrong, and plan responses and safeguards.
- Recognizing complexity. Consider diverse perspectives and the unpredictable aspects of your work.
- Strong leaders. Your decision making affects the whole organization, so make sure to include different points of view.
- Acknowledging risk. Don’t underestimate the potential of serious harm. Look for problems and solutions early.
- Decentralized decision making. Draw on relevant expertise of team members in crisis, and let others lead where they’re most knowledgeable.
Effective leadership from a resilience standpoint involves recognizing that your people have varying backgrounds and skills. They think differently from each other, meaning that each team member will see something others won’t.
We need this diversity of perspectives in organizations to strategize effectively. Pay attention when someone foresees a potential problem or risk – and work together to come up with a way to respond if it comes to pass.
And adopt a proactive attitude! It’s easy to focus on today rather than worrying about what may or may not happen tomorrow. But things can, and do, go wrong.
Giving strategic forethought to possible challenges will make your organization more resilient in the long run.
A Model for Organizational Resilience
The concept of resilience, in general, has a good grounding in psychology. But organizational resilience is a relatively new concept.
In the International Journal of Management Reviews, Julia Hillman and Edeltraud Guenther mention that the idea of “organizational resilience” is hard to study because it doesn’t have a consistent, measurable definition. Some researchers have criticized it for its vagueness.
Is organizational resilience a characteristic? A process? Or an outcome?
The authors attempt to bring clarity to this concept by creating a model that incorporates six aspects of organizational resilience.
First, it involves:
1. Resilient behavior: Actions and attitudes such as accepting reality and embracing paradox.
2. Resilience resources: The relational, emotional, cognitive, and structural resources that help an organization bounce back from adversity.
3. Resilience capabilities: Anticipating things that could go wrong and making sense of problems.
If your organization has the right behavior, resources and capabilities, it can have a…
4. Resilient response: A reaction to stress that keeps your organization functioning, allowing for a shorter recovery, by drawing on relevant resources.
And a resilient response leads to…
5. Organizational growth: A process of adaptation, learning, and renewing of the organization’s capacities.
What's Next?
Clearly, organizational resilience is a complex topic. But it’s an important one to consider. The more adaptable your organization is in the face of change, the less time and fewer resources it will require to adapt when it encounters adversity.
As a manager, part of your job involves anticipating what could go wrong and building an organization strong enough to withstand it. Mind Tools has a few resources that can help you to do just that.
The Road to Resilience Infographic. This illustrated guide explains what resilience means, focusing on an individual perspective, and shares tips for building it.
Building Resilience for Success: A Resource for Managers and Organizations. Our Expert Interview with Cary Cooper shares insights from his book on resilience.
Risk Management and Risk Analysis. This article shares techniques for anticipating what could go wrong, and dealing with it when and if it does.
Tip of the Week
Nothing Gets Done Unless You Start
By Kevin Dunne, Mind Tools Content Editor
Being a writer for these past 35 years, words are what matter to me. But they aren’t so precious that I wait until I have perfectly formed sentences in my head before I put them down on paper.
If I did, I wouldn’t get a whole lot done; I might not get anything done.
As far as tips in my journalism career go, I got one of the best in the first few days of my first job.
Having been out interviewing, I was sitting there in a fairly agitated state – hands poised above my keyboard (yes, we had those in 1989), scanning the notes in my notepad trying to figure out what the story I was about to write was about.
“Just write, just start writing,” came the voice of one of my colleagues. “You can always polish it in a minute.”
I did and I do, and it works. It’s a bit like running. If you sit there all day thinking, “I’m going running in a minute,” you may, or you may not.
Put your trainers on and get yourself outside the front door and you will. Nike had that right: “Just Do It.”
Pain Points Podcast
On this week’s episode of your exclusive, members only Pain Points podcast, we’re talking about getting organized.
Why is it so hard? Is it really that important? What are some top organization tips? Join the content team to hear some hard-won advice and discover some great methods for improving your organization.
Subscribe Today
News Roundup
This Week's Global Workplace Insights
How Surveillance Culture Could Be Making Workers Less Productive
According to a study by Top10VPN, demand for employee monitoring software was up 75 percent in January 2022, while research by Gartner found that 70 percent of large firms were likely to be using tracking software by 2025.
But will WFH or in-office surveillance like monitoring emails and recording every keystroke actually boost productivity?
No, appears to be the answer. CEO Henry Albrecht told U.K. newspaper The Independent, “It all comes down to trust. If employees don’t feel trusted, they don’t feel valued and won’t be engaged at work. Eroding trust... ultimately isn’t good for your business.”
PhD sociologist Dr Tracy Brower told the paper that surveillance of this kind will have “a negative effect on employee engagement and motivation.”
Organizational psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper had a better idea to boost productivity. He said, “Placing health and wellbeing at the heart of a business strategy will help to improve productivity, improve staff retention and reduce presenteeism.”
Bullying at Work – What to Do If You’re Targeted
Bullying, harassment and sexual abuse in workplaces throughout North America is widespread.
And, according to online news portal The Conversation, it affects up to 30 percent of workers over time.
Bullying behaviors range from verbal insults to sexual abuse or physical aggression.
Targets of workplace bullying, say The Conversation, often experience serious repercussions, including stress, burnout and other mental health issues.
If you conclude you’re being bullied, they advise you to:
- Use polite, firm language to ask the bully to stop the conversation.
- Ask the bully to leave.
- Remove yourself from the situation if the bully won’t go.
- Inform your supervisor immediately.
- Seek the support and safety of your peers.
- Project strength and confidence in yourself – bullies pick on people they peg as easy targets.
- Document your experiences.
Your organization should have policies and procedures to support you. If they don’t, say The Conversation, it’s time to leave.
For more information on how wellbeing at work and productivity are linked, see our article Improving Physical Health and Wellbeing at Work.
See you next week for more member-exclusive content and insight from the Mind Tools team!
