The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 7

against poor and irresolute commanders whose troops can see no good reason as to why they are

fighting at all, but against others the riposte may well be one version or other of the ‘mot de

Cambronne’, accompanied by a good kick in the teeth. What, one wonders, would have been the

reaction if, say, the garrison commander at Kohima or the surviving officers of the Irish Guards on

Bou Ficha had sent back an appreciation based on the theories of the ‘mobile school’ to the effect that

any resistance was, in view of the disposition of the enemy forces, futile and that the correct solution

was to surrender? Why should not the enemy be equally brave, or equally ingenious in thinking up

counter-moves and counter-weapons? One of the mysteries of the inter-war years is why the

advocates of armoured warfare did not display equal energy in urging the development of suitable

anti-tank guns. The ballistics were simple and the costs, compared with a tank, low. (Bidewell 1967,

54–55)

[TEXT BOX ENDS]

Reversing the erosion of resilience

Due to the “dark side” of hindsight and the paradoxical nature of approaches to resilience, it

is easier said than done to build and maintain organisational resilience in a holistic manner,

producing consistency and flexibility, and progressiveness and defensiveness

simultaneously. The following stepwise process may be of use:

Step 1: Challenging cognitive biases and heuristics

As a first step, one may examine closely whether successes involved universal success

factors, factors that can be used in any given (future) situation or environment; problematic,

given the plethora of cognitive biases and heuristics that clouds a key decision maker’s

rational thought. The following table (see Table 7.6) offers a few:

16 | P a g e