Roads to Resilience

4.  Customer Focus: The research confirmed the importance of the customer experience is recognised by the case study organisations. An explicit shift to a more customer-centric approach is a strong development with top management sampling the ‘customer experience’ either directly, or by taking part in project reviews. At Zurich Insurance, the importance of resilience to customers is confirmed: “Our resilience is part of the [customer] value proposition” (CFO General Insurance, Zurich Insurance). The desire to deliver an outstanding customer experience and the proactive collection of customer views by customer satisfaction surveys demonstrate the customer focus. TTP employees have a high degree of crossover in expertise and interests, so collaboration and co- operation are possible, and strongly encouraged: “ Although most people at TTP are specialists in their own right, we are unusual in the way we operate across the boundaries of disciplines to share ideas and solve problems. The result is a unique capability to look at technical issues from a broad perspective ”. A key aspect of balancing the peaks and troughs in demand that are inevitable with a responsive business is that each group is willing to help other parts of the business. This “ reinforces the idea that it is a team enterprise. We’re all in it together ” (Chairman). Co-operation at the project level helps and it is seen as “ one of the most powerful things. People will join resources from the other groups and they make a personal bond ” (Managing Director). After-work social groups, sports teams and working on community issues all help foster a sense of shared purpose including “ the fact that they eat in the same restaurant, that sort of social mixing ” (Managing Director). Working together and face-to-face informal communication is strongly encouraged at TTP: “ Often you get a new joiner who says: ‘Why don’t we have a database where I can look up, you know, an electro- engineer with Digital Signal Processing experience?’ And the answer is because if you do that, then you miss out an awful lot. Just go and ask somebody … You’ll find the person you want and you’ll find a whole pile of other stuff too. You learn all sorts about what’s going on ” (Managing Director).

The boxed extract below from The Technology Partnership (TTP) case study illustrates the importance of relationships and networks for a resilient organisation, delivered by strong leadership engagement. The benefits of achieving a shared purpose, no-blame culture, a flat but co-operative structure and focus on the customer experience are all well illustrated in this case study. This extract demonstrates that when relationships and networks are valued and recognised as central to the success of an organisation, greater resilience can be achieved.

Case study: The Technology Partnership – challenging questions

The company also takes active steps to avoid a ‘culture of blame’, which would undermine the emphasis on teams. There is “ very little blame internally … the people who stay awake all night worrying, they will beat themselves up, they do not need to have somebody else telling them that they have done a bad job ” (Project Leader). The board also promotes a constructive approach to risk taking: “ We are aware that people make mistakes … One of the tasks of the more senior guys is to manage the consequences of a junior making mistakes. If they are not allowed to make little mistakes, they will not learn and sooner or later the mistakes will be big ones ” (Chairman). The lack of a blame culture also means that mistakes can be identified and dealt with early on, rather than being ignored: “ We are communicating to the client … we have realised something and it was unforeseen … if it is something where we have made a mistake, we will flag that ” (Project Leader). Although everything is done to avoid a blame culture, this does not mean that criticism is frowned upon. Critical and tough questions are expected in group meetings, and people understand “ it is ok to ask questions, provided you’re polite ” (Chairman). It is also common to ask others for advice which “ is largely quid pro quo because you will do the same for them and usually you try and ask the people that you think have a good level of experience and have experienced problems in the past. So they know the kinds of things that you should be looking for ” (Project Leader). For more insights into resilience at TTP, refer to the full case study in Appendix A

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Roads to Resilience: Building dynamic approaches to risk to achieve future success