If you viewed the video above, you now know what we mean by resilience.  The Question is: how do you create that in your organization?

In nature resilience happens in many ways. Redundancy is one aspect and diversity is another. Nature always has a backup system and never relies on one – anything. Resilience can be tied to waste – or in nature the lack of it. Waste is a human thing, the word is not in nature’s vocabulary.

Reciprocity is another aspect of resilience. In any ecology all plants contribute to the whole. Each gives and receives what is needed. Ecologies are not unchanging and as the needs and conditions change, so do the participants. The changes are not arbitrary, they are rooted in the good of all – in what the systems needs, at the time.

Commitment is another aspect of resilience. Nature is tenacious. Nothing clings to life like weeds. That commitment supports clever experimentation designed to ensure the continuation of the species.

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So what can business learn from such a teacher?

The issue of resilience is much on the minds of forward-thinking companies. IBM considers resilience to be the ability to rapidly adapt and respond and ties it to risk management and compliance. There is an army program that teaches optimism to contrast with “learned helplessness” that often precedes failure as another approach to resilience.

I have no doubt that nature sees resilience as a risk management strategy, not so that life can resist, but so that life can embrace it, learn and move on. It might be possible, thinking like nature, to see “optimism” as a commitment to life – the certainty that there IS a way and not resting until that way is found. The approaches above are not wrong, but because they are looking at solutions to problems they miss the gift that looking at the whole system provides. Seeing only one aspect of something is not wrong, just limited. Truth is more complex than that!

Working with us you will discover the many ways you can begin to see and understand the capability your organization has to be resilient. Resilience requires the interaction of processes, structure and people to develop the capacity to respond quickly and easily to crisis and change. Hang on for a wild and wonderful ride!

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