The foundation of resilience

Empathetic leadership must be an integral part of all rungs of management.

- VIVEK MEHRA

It is important to understand resilience in the context of businesses. Typically, resilience refers to the ability of an object or an individual to come back to status quo or the original position when displaced by an unknown or unforeseen event. Another definition I read talks about the ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties’. These understandings then suggest that the resilience of any organisation should be measured in terms of its ability to ‘return to achieve projected revenue, or profit’. In the context of COVID-19 and the devastation it has caused, resilience seems to be the ability to bounce back to the status quo and resume the journey to revenue and profit generation.

But I tend to view difficulties differently.

For an organisation, the path is sometimes described as ‘rock-solid’; one that ‘marches on’ no matter what the adversity. It is almost like a ship designed to sail through frozen seas or a hot knife that slices everything that is thrown at it. By design, this state of mind is dangerous and detrimental to the medium and long-term future of the organisation. Too much attention is paid to get back to ‘as things were’. All effort is directed at getting back on track while another, more subtle issue begins to surface. To illustrate my point, here is a live example from the times of COVID.

When the lockdown hit in March 2020, all transportation came to a standstill. The publishing industry was brought to a grinding halt, so to speak. I heard the following pain points being aired: