The road to organizational success isn’t a straight line. Detours, roadblocks, and traps litter the path. And each time you come across a hurdle, you have to make sure that your organization successfully passes it, and comes out stronger than before. This is why resiliency is important. So, how can you create a more resilient organization?
How to Create a More Resilient Organization
Prepare for short-term and long-term
To have a more resilient organization, nothing beats preparedness. This is the lesson of the quote “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Organizational resilience is your organization’s ability to survive a crisis and to thrive in times of uncertainty. And to do that, you need to prepare for the adversities that you may face.
If you have a Plan A, you should have a Plan B—and C, and D, and E, and so on. You should have a plan during times of crisis, but what about after that? What about 3 or 5 years from that time? If you prepare not just for the present but also the future, you allow your organization to work more than one cycle at a time. It also allows you to better allocate resources, especially when it’s limited, creating more value for your organization not just in the short-term, but also on the long-term.
Have resilient leaders
A resilient organization of course needs resilient leaders. How else will your organization be able to face adversities and overcome it when you don’t have people who can successfully guide and lead you to do so? Your leaders are responsible for managing the situation at hand and for decision-making. That’s why they must have grit and crisis leadership skills.
Engage your employees
Employee engagement is the key to employee performance. And this statement is even more true during a crisis. Engaged employees know how their roles contribute to business goals and strive with the organization to achieve them. In times of uncertainty, you don’t have to ask them—they use their skills to contribute their ideas to overcome and solve problems. Engaged employees are also most likely to stay with your organization through tough times.
Be creative and innovative
Sometimes, when your organization is facing a problem, the old, reliable, tried-and-tested method of solving it doesn’t work. What can you do when that happens? You think outside of the box. Look at the situation from a different angle. You call forth creativity to think of how to mend the problem. You innovate.
To create a more resilient organization, you have to make innovation at work happen. And your leaders should innovate, too, or they risk stagnating, and soon, left behind by the constantly changing world.
Adapt and adapt
Time proves again and again that to manage change, adaptability is the key. It’s how fast—and how well—your organization can adapt that determines if it will be able to overcome the crisis the change brings, or not. So, it’s no wonder that to create a more resilient organization, you have to always adapt, and adapt. No matter how prepared you are, there will be always things that you didn’t account for that’ll affect your organization, testing your leaders’ and employees’ capabilities, and how creative and innovative you are in problem-solving.
Remember also that when your organization is in the middle of a dilemma, key metrics that you previously relied on to keep track of performance may not apply. For example, maximizing efficiency during those times may also expose your organization to a risky position. On occasions, the most efficient systems are also the most fragile. One case of disruption can cause it to tumble down. It’s crucial to be ready to adapt whenever a disruption in your organization happens.
Disruptions can happen anytime and when you least expect it. Making your organization more resilient can help you survive and thrive when you’re thrown into the middle of a crisis. What other tips can you share to create more resilient organizations?
People Dynamics, Inc. presents the Profiles Adaptability Culture Index, an overall evaluation of your organization’s resilience and adaptability through an integration of the scores of your workforce’s relevant behavioral aspects and competencies. For more information, you may email us at solutions@peopledynamics.co, contact us through our website, or call us through the following numbers: (+632) 8 635 0016 / 8 635 9215.
