Resilience

Think of the human body as it heals from the impact of an illness, or a physical injury.  Think of citizens recovering from natural disasters. Think of a country recovering from a war or a recession. Think of the unbreakable diamond, which has formed under the constant pressure of rocks. In describing resilience, we draw from rich analogies.

To find this ability we looked closely at ways to put these into practice as an eternal student, an entrepreneur and, most importantly, a leader:

• Sleep with one eye open. Unexpected change and misfortune does not mean one cannot make any preparations. It pays to have all sensory systems on: keep a close watch on market dynamics, and your vigilance on customer behavior. Have a detailed operational dashboard that tracks the quality of all processes. Be consistently aware of employee motivation and performance.  Being asleep at the wheel anticipates disaster.
• Feel the change in the air. Prudent leaders develop deep understanding of their industry and markets, but never at the expense of giving an ear to intuition. Try to fine-tune your sense of possible disruption, keeping in mind that animals can sense natural disasters as they are about to hit.
• A penny saved is a penny earned. Redundancy, buffers, slack and fallbacks: they are just inefficiencies in a controlled, predictable world, but can prove incredibly valuable when issues emerge by surprise. Tax advisors might recommend taking substantial debt on board to maximize tax reduction and return on equity. Experienced entrepreneurs know the value of a clean balance sheet when the company suffers a downturn and they keep their enterprise in good general health, with buffer capacity and controlled growth so that a sneeze along the way won’t signal inevitable death.
• Better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away. By investing in genuine relationships, by sharing in good fortune, by creating opportunities for all and maintaining collaboration with others, one nurtures the social capital that will become critically valuable if disaster should strike. Depending on the goodwill of those around you, you will create relationships that will only strengthen in times of need.
• Let’s cut our losses. Confinement is a powerful way to reduce the impact of misfortune. And so is a diverse portfolio of activities as never everything gets hit at the same time. An enterprise that runs its entire operations on one integrated IT system is very vulnerable. So is an enterprise with one production facility or with one product line or with one geographic market of sales. For these enterprises it is very difficult or even impossible to isolate a problem and cut it loose from the rest of the enterprise. So in case of disaster the ship can sink with everyone on it.

• When the going gets tough the tough get going. Resilience is first of all about mental strength: the ability of an individual, group of people or organization to not lose spirit under duress and setback but to remain motivated, upbeat and confident. Those that give up do tend to lose out, those that decide to get back do regain the lead. Does your organization, as Dutch footballer Johan Cruijff tried to explain, “see every disadvantage as an advantage”?
• Never waste a good crisis. Resilience means controlling your fears and seeing ways to divert the impact of the trouble. It is the skill of the Judoka that uses the forward move of her opponent to pull her off-balance. Innovative entrepreneurs might even reframe a setback into an opportunity: an opportunity to make a clean ship, to change course, to change products, pricing or distribution, to do something inspirational that wins customers’ hearts. In many industries, new innovative companies and leaders emerge during an economic downturn.
• Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see. Resilience comes with a high degree of suppleness, elegance and grace: the qualities of a dancer. The surprise punch needs to be returned swiftly and effortlessly in the beat of the moment. A classic case is how to deal as a producer with a product which causes accidents, e.g., a car with a faulty airbag like Toyota recently experienced.  The only smart way is to immediately take full responsibility, recall suspect cars, apologize and pay for all damage done.
• Reculer pour mieux sauter. The French proverb translates as to give way a little in order to take up a stronger position. The essence of resilience is to put short-term considerations within longer-term contexts. You could lower your prices to maintain market share and ruin your brand positioning or weather the downturn and then recoup market share with your brand fully in tact.

Ultimately, resilience is about preparing the body to receive blows from every angle and knowing how to respond once they start coming. It’s about training yourself to fall over and over again until you can bounce back up once the drought arrives, the market starts to collapse, or you are about to receive the greatest punch of all time to the face.