The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 1

depth on the German campaign in the west in May/June 1940, but will also add insights into

other campaigns and battles in WWII. All attempt to be thought-provoking in their own right,

resonating with many of today’s challenges about how to be resilient.

The need for Resilience. Organisational Resilience is a state, to be established

and maintained to counter the effects of two key environmental conditions: uncertainty and

complexity.

Uncertainty. Uncertainty is associated with a lack of knowledge about how the future

will unfold, leading to the resulting inability to pursue an appropriate organisational response.

We cannot establish with confidence how an environment may change, what impact it may

have on the function of our own organisation, and thus we cannot define a response to it to

either prevent it from happening or bounce back from it.

Complexity. As shown in Figure 1.1, in a ‘tightly-coupled’ system, interdependencies

between elements mean that incidents can build upon each other and escalate rapidly,

triggering a sudden crisis. ‘Loose coupling’ implies that points of failure are relatively

independent, and buffers or slack between them can limit the effects of interconnectivity.

Loose coupling provides ‘breathing space’ to contain failures, thereby preventing them from

gradually destabilising the whole.

Starting point

Sudden

Planned path

Performance

Actual path

Time

Non survival

Starting point

Planned path

Creeping

Performance

Actual path

Time

Non survival

Figure 1.1: Sudden versus creeping crisis

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