Organizational resilience is the ability to foresee, plan for, respond to and adapt to gradual change and unexpected disruptions in order to survive and prosper. Those who can adopt practical methods to cultivate resilience in the face of change, whether through remote/hybrid work or digital acceleration, can more quickly recover from setbacks and have an advantage over competitors.
Regardless of what a setback implies, having a resiliency strategy and culture in place enables organizations to mitigate losses and maintain longevity in uncertain times.
Resilient organizations:
- Create an environment for innovation
- Adapt to meet changing customer needs
- Overcome reputational and organizational setbacks
- Rise to challenges
We’ve outlined the seven building blocks of organizational resilience below to help put you on the path to resilience.
AUDIT RESILIENCE GAPS
Auditing resilience gaps helps you figure out where your organization is having trouble with resilience. This can be done by sending a brief digital survey to your employees. It is an excellent way to identify areas for development while also including your employees in the problem-solving process.
Allow employees to respond anonymously and ask open-ended questions such as:
- What has been your largest technological or platform-related challenge this year, and how much time would it save you each week if we fixed it?
- What has been the most challenging problem this year?
- What gaps do you perceive in the company’s ability to be resilient?
- What one change here would have the greatest influence on your personal resilience?
With strategic technology investments, you can increase resilience outcomes regardless of the size of your technology team.
As markets become more stable and predictable, it’s vital to review toolkits, organizational structures and internal procedures to ensure that they’re not only up to date, but also support security, compliance and backup best practices, all of which are critical to organizational resilience.
PRIORITIZE TECHNOLOGY GAPS TO BRIDGE
To ensure resiliency, most technological environments require some fine-tuning, frequent refreshing and continuous support.
Prioritizing technology gaps based on what’s most critical as well as what can help your organization improve productivity, customer service or another metric you care about, is a great way to stay on top of things — for both budgets and teams.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOR RESILIENCE
Introducing new technologies to boost organizational outcomes can result in a surge of stress if the change is made without considering the people involved. Organizational resilience must always consider people first and technology next.
No matter how far we delve into technology, automation and the future of work, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are attempting to make life easier for employees and customers. The driving force behind technological advancements must be to ensure long-term success rather than short-term gains.
Before making an organizational change, always ask yourself the following questions:
- What impact will this change have on employees?
- How can we reduce stress by adjusting implementation timelines and practices?
- What feedback loops can we implement to ensure that everyone feels heard as we implement these changes?
ACCELERATE RESILIENCE WITH TECHNOLOGY
When developing a comprehensive organizational resilience strategy, an organization’s whole IT ecosystem must be considered, right from cybersecurity to compliance to backup and recovery. If this seems overwhelming, start with mission-critical tools and applications first.
Remember that when it comes to organizational resilience, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Web Fire can help you develop a strategy that is tailored to your individual goals and environment.
PLAN TO RECOVER SUSTAINABLY, NOT JUST QUICKLY
Speed without accuracy can cost your organization a lot of money if it affects uptime and data privacy, causes compliance concerns or unknowingly allows dangerous code into your network. Implement resilient technologies and strategies well so that you recover sustainably, not just quickly.
Take time to properly implement resilient technologies and strategies so that they strengthen your organization rather than expose it to new vulnerabilities. Once your tested solutions are ready for production, make sure you provide comprehensive training for all users as well as your dedicated change manager, who can troubleshoot issues and update the documentation to reflect new processes as needed.
Establish a communications strategy so that those affected are aware of the changes and measures they must take to be successful in using the new technology or following a new process.