19 / 54
Organizational Resilience | BSI and Cranfield School of Management
21
from multiple perspectives and diversity. Embrace multiple viewpoints and listen to
diverse voices.
Insight
Interpret and respond to your present conditions.
Bring people together to pause, step back and see the big picture, helping them
consider the interactions between the various parts of the organization. Examine
knock‑on effects and shift your focus between individual parts of the organization
and the organization as a whole. Try to bring clarity and focus to the challenges you
confront and frame them in ways that helps people create shared understanding
and shared commitment. Look for patterns and connections in your environment
and develop multiple hypotheses about what is really going on. This involves
systematically gathering information and evidence from diverse sources including
first hand observation of customers in the field or frontline staff to continually
refine and update your understanding of the status of ongoing operations and the
environment you face. In short, build situational awareness. Search relentlessly for
latent problems and errors. Encourage people to report anomalies, mistakes and
concerns, however minor, without fear of retribution, and provide confidence that
people’s concerns will be addressed.
Avoid becoming detached from what users and frontline employees do, say,
think and feel. Spend time observing, engaging and empathizing with people to
understand their experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in
the physical environment to have a deeper personal understanding of the issues
involved. Some of the most powerful realizations come from noticing disconnects
between what someone says and what they do. Elicit stories from the people you
talk to, and always ask “Why?” to uncover deeper meaning. Sometimes it is important
to reframe or disrupt conventional thinking about solutions by challenging the
commonly accepted understanding of the underlying problem. Enable people to
explore the contradictory aspects of a problem and encourage novel solutions,
which might shift people’s mindsets from seeing only ‘either/or’ choices to seeing
‘both/and’ solutions.
Oversight
Monitor and review what has happened and assess changes.
Put in place a robust process for identifying, prioritizing, sourcing, managing and
monitoring the organization’s critical risks and ensure that process is continually
improved as the business environment changes. Balance performance and
compliance by ensuring that management’s actions are consistent with corporate
strategy, reflect the culture of the business, and are in line with the organization’s
risk profile. Understand the risks inherent in your business model, including the
key assumptions underlying the continued viability of the mission, and agree with
executive management on the company’s risk appetite and tolerance of failure.
Recognize your organization’s fallibility and monitor how closely the system is
operating relative to its performance limits, and manage any deviations as quickly as
possible once they emerge. To achieve this, the organization must monitor its own
performance and track how things are going. Because performance is always easier
Spend time
observing, engaging
and empathizing
with people to
understand their
experiences and
motivations