Page 244 - The Resilient Organization

Conclusion 229

Resilience needs to become second nature. Part of this automatic, sponta-
neous, reflexive act requires managing the consequences of past perform-
ance so that the organization does not remain a captive to its past (see Part
Two). Resilience requires building an organization that is receptive to its
foundational ingredients: requisite (imaginative) thinking, resource scarce
innovation, robust design, adaptive fitness, and sisu as discussed in Part
Three. It is not a one-time effort. Rather, resilience requires constant
rehearsal and management practice, as suggested in the final section of this
book. Only then will resilience become the most sustaining of all, a part of
the culture.
Resilience, like life, comes in different colors and shapes. There is the
tiger-on-your-tail kind of need for resilience. The life-threatening situation
in which you have to run as fast as you can. There is also the kind of
resilience that sustains the company in between strategy shifts. Is your com-
pany in the process of implementing a new strategy? Trying to accomplish
transformation? Most companies are, most of the time. So the second need
for resilience is the capacity to sustain strategy change. The third kind of
resilience is perhaps the most advanced—it is the opportune: turning threats
into opportunities prior to their becoming either. Being serendipitously
sagacious.

GOT RESILIENCE?
1. Can you outrun the tiger (that is, escape from or recover from a
crisis)?
2. Can your organization thrive in between strategies?
3. Can you turn potential threats into opportunities prior to a specific
threat materializing or the opportunity becoming heavily competed?