Seeking Business Resilience? Focus on These 3 Areas First

How do you think about business resilience? Is it just about “bouncing back?” Like a rubber band?  In today’s world, business resilience is no longer about just trying to get back to the way things used to be. Resilience must be future-focused.  We go well beyond the rubber band approach with what we refer to as Adaptive Resilience. It’s a way for businesses to “bounce forward.”

a⋅dapt⋅ive re⋅sil⋅ience

noun

the ability to quickly realign or capitalize on shifting circumstances. It allows organizations to achieve continued success by embracing change over resistance and finding opportunities in challenges.

We believe there are 3 key areas where you should focus first to enhance business resilience:

• Employees
• Culture
• Leaders

The Role of Employees in Business Resilience

An organization’s resilience is a sum of its parts, so that means each and every member of your workforce has an impact. But how can you foster an Adaptive Resilience mindset among employees? It’s a great question as workers deal with the fallout from some of the same issues impacting businesses. For example, employees are being hit by inflation, so is your business. Employees can’t get items they need in their daily lives due to the supply chain, just like your business may be dealing with shortages. Employees are absorbing information about political and governmental changes that impact the level of certainty in their lives, the same goes for your business. The weight of the outside stressors that employees bring to work with them every day must be taken into account when considering how to support them in maintaining their resilience on the job.

When we spoke with a number of business leaders earlier this year for our first blog related to Adaptive Resilience, they were already well aware of their employees’ potential resilience challenges. Here’s some of what they had to say:

“Fear of change is the most prevalent and challenging obstacle, so we are consistently finding new ways to adapt to overcome this fear… Being brave enough to explore beyond our comfort zone has led to countless improvements and given us the confidence to share that courage with others who may be experiencing some hesitation with change.”

“Will people get tired of being so flexible? Being constantly ready for change and surprise? That can wear on your psyche and wear you down. Keeping people fresh, getting them time off, getting them to recharge their batteries is something we constantly monitor.”

Clearly there is a need to think about business resilience when it comes to employees at the individual level.

One way to do that is by looking at what individual employee resilience is not.

A recent article on that topic in the Harvard Business Review focused on what some organizations get wrong about business resilience. Here are some takeaways:

• Don’t confuse employee stoicism with resilience
• Don’t view resilience as something employees have or don’t have
• Think of resilience as a state of being any employee can attain

Employee development is widely recognized as being valuable to getting resilience right. That may be why a recent survey showed an increase in the number of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who say they see improving employee experience (EX) as a primary business resilience goal. This further solidifies the role that EX research can play in building overall business resilience.

Culture Builds Business Resilience

When thinking about individual employee resilience through the lens of corporate culture, communication has to be a focus. Here are some questions to think about:

• Does your culture support employee input?
• Does your culture offer resources for employees when they do speak up?
• Does your culture lean into empathy across the organization?

These are also issues some of the business leaders we consulted with on Adaptive Resilience earlier in 2022 spend time thinking about.

“What works is transparent and frequent communication. I think this kind of communication helps to empower each and every person within the organization, so they truly feel that they can be part of the solution.”

“Without change, there is no growth… So what do we do about it? Listen with empathy.”

Many experts contend that transforming communication in your work culture can deliver some of the biggest business resilience results. That includes looking at:

• Frequency of communication
• Transparency of what is communicated
• The hierarchy of communication within an organization

A culture of business resilience built around communication needs to be rooted in honesty. You don’t do your employees or your company any favors by purposely shielding information or by not sharing enough relevant details on the challenges being faced. In other words, don’t promote an inauthentic culture of “happy talk.” Build a culture where people truly understand (and accept) the reality of the situation now and into the future. This holistic focus on communication and culture is critical to strengthening business resilience, which in turn enhances opportunities to harmonize customer experience (CX) and EX.

Leadership – Business Resilience Starts at the Top

Any discussion around culture and resilience simply can’t exist without also talking about the role of leadership. The two are intrinsically intertwined.  We certainly found that to be the case in our earlier Adaptive Resilience conversations with business leaders.

“Culture is critical to the future of organizations. We must ensure that leaders within organizations are working on and maintaining their own resilience… Adaptive Resilience is not something you can tell people to live without living it yourself as a leader.”

But today more is being asked of leaders than ever before. Evidence of that can be found in new data showing 60% of SMBs see the greatest challenge in adapting to disruption is day-to-day work taking precedence over the “big picture” business resilience agenda.

Solutions? Measure Resilience

What are some tools and techniques to help leaders who are committed to business resilience but who may be stretched too thin? One solution is to consider measuring business resilience. For example, look at business metrics that measure flexibility and responsiveness. This can help you shift your focus beyond short-term performance to the long-term growth potential.

Another strong solution option calls for utilizing employee experience research. It can be a great tool to get feedback on what is (and is not working) within company culture, communication, and leadership. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques can be applied to help identify and better understand your organization’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to see where to focus your business resilience efforts.

This can also reinforce the importance of top leadership having a pulse on people at every level, including newer, junior, or middle managers. As these emerging leaders work to develop their resilience skills, they can tend to feel overtaxed (even burned out.) Something as simple as regular conversations with these managers can help build their resilience. Emphasizing that they are supported and that “we’re all in this together” can go a long way in keeping the culture positive and the vision future-focused.

Mindset Shift: Cost or Value

At the end of the day, leaders need to look at business resilience not in terms of cost, but as a value add, an investment for the long haul. Again, it’s about getting that bounce forward, forward into the future. That way your employees, your business, and your leaders develop a mindset beyond just “bouncing back” to what was. It’s moving your organization beyond the dynamics of the rubber band.

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