Page 240 - The Resilient Organization

8

Can resilience be built from such engagement strategies as described in the
four “resilience postcards” in the preceding chapters? It is my hope that
such strategies will play an important part in closing the resilience gap—
today’s organizational capabilities and tomorrow’s need for resilience—and
will sustain the rise of the resilient organization.
Amateurs have throughout history been making significant contribu-
tions to technological and societal progress as the first postcard puts
forward. Organizations open to contribution (as described in the second
postcard) to anyone anywhere are likely, to the extent the effort can be
effectively (self)coordinated, outcompete any closed system if they can, like
the Dean for America (and later the Barack Obama) campaign, motivate a
social movement type of enthusiasm behind their cause. (The Dean
campaign did not fail because of its openness—even in the last stretch the
informal organization fought hard for recovery.) Our institutions in Europe
and the United States (as well as elsewhere in the world, like China) will
need to adjust to future challenges, and for this purpose, tempered, institu-
tionally savvy activism is critical as prescribed in the third postcard. Finally,
in the fourth postcard I argue that management principles and practices are
in dire need of inventive experimentation to rise to meet the global chal-
lenges that will require supreme organizational resilience. Inventive experi-
mentation would help corporations and public institutions develop the
advance change capability that is likely needed for the next 10 to 20 years.
Table C.1 suggests some of the impending challenges we need to face,
together with my hope for emergent resilient responses. I suggest we start
giving these issues serious thought. Because the encounters they produce are
likely to require more than on-the-spot handling, they require the develop-
ment and practice of resilience now. For instance, how will the increasing
numbers of young, unemployed (and often unmarried) men find construc-
tive purpose in life? In the Middle East, the youth unemployment rate (for

■ 225 ■