BizTips from SCORE – Resilience

Resilience is the ability for a business to absorb stress and uncertainty, recover critical functionality and rise about the chaos and adapt their systems and processes to the new circumstances. Organizations that adopt resiliency as a value have common characteristics:

Redundancy. Unexpected situations can be buffered by having redundant functions.  Instead of having one main manufacturing or assembly or retailing location, having two or more avoids the shock of unexpected occurrences.

Diversity. Having an organization employing people from different backgrounds and cognitive profiles fosters multiple ways of thinking, reacting and acting in rapidly changing environments.

Modularity. Creating an organization with modularity where individual units can fail to perform without taking the entire organization down. This may not be the most efficient way of organizing but modularity creates options when environments become uncertain.

Adaptability. Trial and error philosophies allow organizations to evolve via experimentation. Having the ability to rapidly change, yet absorbing the consequences of quick directional modification makes an organization resilient

Prudence.  When organizations believe that if something can plausibly happen it will, then it operates applying precautionary principles in deciding on actions.   What this means is that contingency plans are central to the strategic thinking and acting of resilient organizations

Collaboration.  There is no better way to increase an organization’s ability to become more resilient than to collaborate with other players.  By sharing resources or platforms and enterprise can increase productivity, efficiency and flexibility.

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Contributed by Marc L. Goldberg, Certified Mentor SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands.  Sources: Abiola, T & Udofia, O. (2011) Psychometric assessment of Wignald & Young’s resilience scale., McDonald, G, Jackson,D., Vickery H.M. (2012) Nurse Education Today, 32, 378-384. For Free and confidential mentoring contact SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands www.capecod.score.org, capecodscore@verizon.net.

Tips from SCORE Vol II eBook is available for free download – http://www.amazon.com/db/B08QPR7G35.