Building Corporate Resilience

This article examines the increasing need for resilience in organizations, then explains the three underpinnings of individual resilience and how they can be replicated in firms. In the pre-COVID period, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) was the trendy acronym that summed up the four major challenges faced by managers in the Age of Disruption. Unfortunately, the VUCA world has now been disrupted by a pandemic—which has triggered all four dimensions simultaneously for most organizations. As Diane Coutu notes, resilient people tend to possess three core attributes: 1) an unwavering acceptance of reality; 2) a deep belief underpinned with strong values that life is meaningful; and 3) an uncanny ability to improvise. Organizations can build up three pillars of organizational resilience: facing down reality, the search for meaning, and the ability to improvise or bricolage. Within your organization, ask yourself: “Do people really understand and accept the realities we’re facing now?” These questions are important because people and organizations often slip into denial as a coping mechanism when facing adverse situations. It is time for organizations to rethink their people responsibilities if they want to help develop the resiliency that today’s organizations require. Since finding meaning in one’s situation is such an important aspect of resilience, it is no surprise that the most resilient people and organizations possess strong value systems.

• Organizational resilience, crisis management, managing disruption, workforce “bricoleurs”