Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 01

January/February 2018 // Canadian Government Executive / 21 Readings Brief If resilience is a strategic competency for organizations, what does that competency look like exactly? Too often, resilience is witnessed in a rear-view mirror after the fact. However, that does not really help an organization to become resilient-capable. Some recent research has started to look at this issue and come up with some practical observations about what makes an organization resilient. There is a very clear link of basic sound management to resilience. A 2013 study from New Zealand found that “To be resilient, organizations rely on strong leadership, an awareness and understanding of their operating en- vironment, their ability to manage vul- nerabilities, and their ability to adapt in response to rapid change.” Key Questions to Assess Organizational Resilience Capacity Let’s see if we can produce a check-list of things to look for in the organization, its leaders, its culture and its people that might indicate that they are resilient: 1. Do organizational leaders understand the basic processes that keep things working in their organization? 2. Is the organization already adapting and learning? Are there early warning systems that capture both errors and anomalous law-noise events? Are they used? 3. Do the operations and strategic sides find ways of the organization to ex- amine such events (sometimes called near misses), determine their impor- tance, respond and adapt as a nor- mal thing to do without seeking out a scapegoat? 4. Is there a high turnover of key staff, or does the organization have strategies to retain people and their organiza- tional knowledge? 5. Does the organization build capac- ity in staff to respond to changing cir- cumstances? To identify new means of making things work? 6. Is there a robust risk management cul- ture, not just a paper system? 7. Is there a holistic approach to identi- fying weaknesses and responding to them that engages the whole organi- zation, not just response planners or auditors? 8. Does the organization have a good idea of the vulnerabilities in its net- works of stakeholders, suppliers and those it depends on to achieve its goals? 9. Is there redundancy of key capacities, supplies and systems? 10. Can one part of the organization’s in- frastructure shut down and another part take up the slack? 11. Are there supply and equipment re- serves? 12. Is the organization maintaining its in- frastructure, human capacity and sys- tems so they are healthy? 13. Are systems being tested regularly? This is not just power or mechanics. 14. Are response scenarios being put to leaders to react to and see if the way they make decisions is the best one? 15. Is there requisite variety in how the organization gathers information to get varying opinions and listen to those it does not really enjoy listening to? 16. Is the organization engaged outside its boundaries to learn from others in its field, in companion fields, within the professions that make up its skill set? This is not a definitive list of boxes to check, just a set of cultural indictors. For more insight on resilience and how to measure it, go to a great website of a social enterprise group called Resilient Organi- zations at www.resorgs.org.nz . References: 1. Erica Seville, “Resilience: Great Concept but What Does it Mean?”, Briefing Bite – Paper presented to the US Council on Competitiveness Workshop, Risk and Resilience, Nov. 2008, Ac- cessed at https://www.research - gate.net/publication/29489555 2. Karl E. Weick & Kathleen M. Sut- cliffe, Weick & Sutcliffe. (2013). Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty, 3rd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Boss ISBN 0-7879-5627-9 3. Lee, Amy, Vargo, John & Seville, “Developing a Tool to Measure and Compare Organizations’ Resilience”, New Hazards Review, Vol 14, No. 1, February, 2013 A ndrew G raham is an Adjunct Professor at School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University. mpetency “To be resilient, organizations rely on strong leadership, an awareness and understanding of their operating environment, their ability to manage vulnerabilities, and their ability to adapt in response to rapid change.”