Leadership Strategy Services

Organizational resilience doesn’t come about by chance. It has to be created. If resilience is defined as an organization’s ability to change from within, before the need for change is imposed from without, then companies and their leaders need to be clear about the competencies this demands at personal, team, and organizational level, and about how these abilities can be developed and fostered in line with the specific needs of the organization.

THE WORLD loves a turnaround story. Recent favo­rites include Fiat, LEGO, and Philippine Airlines. We never seem to tire of tales about struggling enterprises becoming freshly profitable and viable. We might be wise, though, to spend a bit more time contemplating why so many once-thriving companies faltered in the first place. Could the turnarounds have been avoided? How? These are important questions. Protracted decline is both dangerous and costly. Shareholders, weary of tumult, want predictably strong and stable performance, with increasing emphasis on “stable.” While all businesses face challenges, and downturns are to a degree unavoidable, steps can be taken to steer clear of turnarounds. We believe companies can be intentional about resilience.

Intentional can be defined as “by design” or “according to a plan.” Not surprisingly, most business people believe in being intentional. They proactively optimize the variables in their control to increase their chances of success in the face of the countless, powerful variables they cannot control. Surprising as it may sound, resilience is more controllable than is widely supposed.

Read full article "Dressed to resist - How to make your business crisis-proof" in the edition of 
THE FOCUS on Resilience.