360 Resilience

Resilience Thinking – It’s when not if.

Paul Hancock — Fri, 17 May 2019 13:56:48 +0000

The shape of change

The recent and rapid evolution of our high streets in the UK and main street USA have been a very visible sign of change which few will have missed. Resilience thinking helps business leaders understand what that change will look like for their business to ensure their organisation thrives. Despite all evidence to the contrary, we all expect that change will look a certain way every time and use the same method that worked last year to address it. Investors sigh when they see another new entrepreneur’s growth projection in a pitch deck using the hockey stick curve made popular by Silicon Valley start-ups. Boards sign off on next year’s budgets based on straight line projections extrapolated from last year’s figures with some minor adjustments in variables. Whilst these aren’t the only possible shapes of change, they certainly meet the expectations of their audience, but are they right?

Starting from the beginning

If change is so sure, it should be easy to work out what it will look like and take the necessary actions to take advantage of them. If only, and I for one certainly don’t have a crystal ball in my management toolkit! Thinking about future change is difficult and requires stepping away from incrementalism built on a rear-view mirror of past sales and optimism based on the unfounded belief in a new business model. Why neither approach works today is simply explained by the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of every decision we make with the uncertainty and speed of the potential outcome.

The Cynefin Model – Snowdon and Kurtz

David Snowden’s work at IBM creates the first step in how any change is viewed and how it should be responded to. In common with most problem-solving methods, the Cynefin framework allows first the ability to categorise, then respond and finally to reframe an issue. Resilience thinking means deliberately developing an understanding of the relationship between cause and effect and enabling a response as a matter of good practice, so moving it from the complex to complicated, the retrospective response to expert–led action.

Is it just a blip or more fundamental?

Digging a bit deeper into any particular change or disruption, it is likely to look like one of two types or a combination of them.

The first is a one-off event, often called an acute disruption. Characterised by a dip in performance and a return to a similar level over a period of time it is recognised by professionals in a number of fields such as logistics and manufacturing where each phase of the disruption is often analysed and optimised to reduce both short, and long-term impacts. Sheffi has developed the traditional simplified bathtub curve to describe more realistically the shape of the impact of a chronic disruption and what actually unfolds.

Acute Disruption – Sheffi and Rice

In regional disaster management or acute business disruption, the same character shape can be observed in retrospect, however, as each event is unique optimum responses are rarely deployed. Long term impacts mean that rarely does a business return to exactly the same performance as before, long term performance is often degraded by damage to the supporting infrastructure which is not reinstated. Resilience thinking means lessons are learned and replacement equipment/facilities are ‘built back better’, preparation includes building capacities to cope with disruption and ensures speedier recovery than the competition.

Chronic Disruption – Scheffer, et al.

The second is more common but often less headline-worthy, a temporary and small difficulty which is called a chronic disruption. Characterised by a myriad of cumulative resource sapping workarounds, with this type of disruption things return to normal until they reach a tipping point. Ecological and social systems are often described in this way, climate change the obvious one.

Recognising these chronic disruptions and the point where they will tip the business into a new operating environment can be a surprising new way to generate efficiency at a very low cost. Resilience thinking means understanding what attributes a business should develop to create steeper sides to the curve to keep within the current and well understood ‘business as normal’ and measuring the right things to indicate when a tipping point is near.

The question is what is on the other side of a tipping point, what will the new normal look like?

Combining the two might look like; frequent staff sickness from stress over a prolonged period adds to the remaining staff workload (chronic disruption). Overtime payments, stress management counselling and some new staff hires return the situation to normal. New technology is introduced leading to changing shift patterns and strikes (chronic disruption), lead to a tipping point causing the business to miss important delivery deadlines (acute disruption). This allows a competitor to take the longstanding customer and reduced turnover for the business in the future or the ‘new normal’. Resilience thinking requires sensemaking of all of these disruptions and building attributes which are relevant to your business in advance to deal with both the chronic and acute.

A resilience thinking perspective

Returning to straight lines and hockey sticks, clearly, the shape of the line and the time it takes to develop makes a significant difference to the management response. Perspective can be important here, as many will still act like the earth is flat. Is the change a steady cumulative one, is it an exponential collapse/growth or is it an abrupt step change? In truth, it’s rarely one or the other, as complex systems have so many influences. What in the early stages might look like a straight line, can soon seem like a stratospheric growth curve which can then level off as a particular constraint is met. Looking at past performance is valuable for certain situations however is rarely a good indicator in complex and changing conditions. Resilience thinking requires a more nuanced approach, of probing, sensing, and adaptive response which takes these all into account dynamically rather than for a quarterly report or in an investor pitch deck. Resilience thinking is all about recognising change and preparing for it, whatever its shape.

The author, Paul Hancock is a Founding Partner at 360 Resilience Ltd. 360resilience.com

The post Resilience Thinking – It’s when not if. appeared first on 360 Resilience.

Decision making on the shifting sands of the facts.

Paul Hancock — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 17:24:16 +0000

A fact learned is forever.

Planning for an upcoming trip to Southern India involves a whole host of preparations to ensure its success. Experience of travel in South Asia teaches travellers to think about climate differences, cultural norms, visas and most importantly health issues. Indeed previous visits required a significant number of inoculations and a decision on malaria prophylaxis so early consultation with an travel health expert is always recommended. Imagine the surprise when not only did I not need any injections but that whole swathes of the Indian subcontinent are now low or no risk for malaria! As a manager and leader we pride ourselves on making decisions based on the facts, but what I knew about malaria in India was wrong so what about everything else I’ve learned in the past?

Decisions based on our world view.

What sort of facts might change was my next question, and there is a surprisingly large number affecting all sorts of issues. How tall is Mount Everest, that must be constant? Well actually it changes as the snow cap compacts, weight increases/decreases with weather, the tectonic plates move and technology allows more accurate measurement. Where does Israel get its fresh water from?, a significant reason for the failure of the peace talks in the 1990’s. It was largely the river Jordan basin but over the last 20 years has been diversified with desalination and other sources changing the balance. How do the majority of people access the internet? Last year in the UK Ofcom reported more than 62% was via mobile devices rather than desktop’s with ownership of smartphones doubling in just 6 years. What is the most reliable method of oncology diagnosis, a world class specialist or AI? In work at Johns Hopkins in the US, IBM Watson has proved more reliable and certainly quicker at diagnosis. These slowly (and not so slowly) changing facts are called ‘mesofacts’ by Samuel Arbesman and a surprising amount of everyone’s knowledge falls into this category.

Getting right to the (right) facts.

So if the facts can change, logically so should the decisions we base on them. Our decision making biases and heuristics are however firmly rooted in what we already know. It’s much easier to use information where the outcome was OK last time than to constantly start from a blank slate or tabula rasa. If we assume the next digital transformation project we are undertaking will be on desk based PC’s like our last one, will it likely be more successful than one with a mobile first approach? Is our supply chain able to rapidly supply products to service the new customer we just signed? These are real business challenges where recent decisions made by leaders were based on the facts of rear-ward experience. What many describe as critical thinking is required to make sure decisions are made on the right facts looking forward, not just those to hand from previous experience.

A prescription for factfulness.

What can possibly go wrong? It’s clear that facts can and do change and the results really do matter to decision makers. Hans Rosling in his recent book Factfulness suggests that business leaders will need to care more about this in the future than managing daily minutiae. He identifies ten rules of thumb to help getting to the right facts.

Where should we start? Five strategies appear both obvious and hard at the same time now we have some rules of thumb to apply in our testing of the facts.

Learn- Foster a culture of continuous learning for individuals and the organisation.
Curiosity – Be open to new ideas and influences and deliberately seek them out.
Adapt– Change your view to the world as it is, not try to make outdated strategies fit.
Un-learn – Be prepared to abandon knowledge but retain the learning from gaining it.
Question – Ask what is important, how transparent and widely shared is this.

Creating a culture which is fact based and has learning and curiosity at its heart should be the aim of every leader to build a successful and resilient organisation.

‘the illiterate of the twenty first century won’t be those who can’t read and write, but those who can’t learn, unlearn, and relearn’ Alvin Toffler.

Opinion

The foundation of any successful decision should be sound facts. As a designer I frequently fail-safe to tried and tested solutions however in a world where the energy consumption of the buildings I designed have reduced by 80% in my working life, this is not sustainable or realistic. Change is the new normal and we each need to learn new ways to succeed, by preparing in advance, developing strategies and tools to thrive and grow in the face of disruption.

Is our personal resilience at risk from hyper-connectivity ?

Jason Valette — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 09:00:37 +0000

Personal resilience is more important today than it ever was. Providing inner strength, it helps us to go with the flow and bounce back from adversity. More than a buzzword, personal resilience can be learned and contribute real advantages in situations which disrupt our daily lives. Similarly, technology is a tool many people feel is essential in life. Some would argue it simplifies our lives and allows us to stay on top of new developments. I would agree, but we need to understand when the use of technology strengthens us and when it may harm our personal resilience? It’s clear to anyone who remembers changing television channels manually or mobiles the size of a brick that things have changed and they are not going back. However, has our increased connectivity helped to create a life worth living or decreased our ability to bounce back from life’s little hurdles?

The rise of smartphones

Communications technology, more commonly known as IT or ICT (Information Technology or Information and Communications Technology), has been around since the eighties. However, access to ICT has increased with the arrival of smartphones. As a result, some countries have had smartphone ownership double in the last five years. In the UK it’s reported that %72 of adults own smartphones. Along with increased ownership comes easy access to social media and the internet. Globally, we are connecting to data and absorbing digital knowledge more than any other time in history, and this can be both positive and negative.

The Upside… we are more connected

Families divided by distance is a common hallmark of living in a global village. If it wasn’t for Facetime, my children would only see their grandparents once a year. Consequently, the ability to keep in touch with old friends and loved ones is one of the many benefits of a connected world. Working in remote regions or ‘offshore’ no longer means long periods of isolation without speaking to your partner, children or friends. Easy access to information has spurred new conversations and change in many nations which were previously closed off to the outside world. A recent study looking at the ‘revolutionary’ effects of social media found that in countries without a free press, social media provided an essential outlet for political discussion and ideas. Many would see these as the benefits related to our hyper-connected state, and I would agree.

The Downside… we are more connected

A quick ‘google’ search provides several counter-arguments to the many benefits of being connected. Studies have shown that exposure to digital devices can be addictive in children (and adults), and although not all children react in the same way, taking away digital devices may cause withdrawal-type symptoms. Recent long-term studies have demonstrated the adverse effects Facebook can have on well-being. Even our workplace connectivity can affect us. In the spring of 2017, MIT Sloan management review talked about The Heavy toll of Always-on Technology and how it increased workplace stress and decreased efficiency. The article suggested technology-free hours and technology-free zones in the office would help in reducing the symptoms of hyper-connectivity. We are aware of the problem, but it is a challenging one as hyper-connectivity effects, everyone, slightly differently.

The risk to organisational resilience

Communications and learning play an important role in organisational resilience. As such, you may expect the smartphone boom to contribute positively to resilience. However, we are often reminded its not the quantity but the quality of information we absorb that is important. Death by Information Overload and The Heavy toll of Always-on Technology remind us; smartphones, distractions and information overload are real aspects of a hyper-connected world. Distractions in the workplace affect productivity, as our mind must spend time sifting information that has little to no relevance. While multi-tasking was an essential skill in the nineties, being able to ignore distractions is more useful today. Organisations that provide guidance for individuals will see an increase in resilience as people focus more on horizon issues and spend less time sifting through useless data. If you are concerned about your organisation’s resilience, we can help to address these issues for you.

Personal resilience in a hyper-connected world

So how does all this connectivity effect personal resilience? Isn’t being connected and well-informed a vital aspect of resilience? Like with most things, too much connectivity can be a problem. A big part of what makes people resilient is their network of family, friends or colleagues. Dr.Dennis S. Charney, co-author of Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, list “establish and nurture a supportive social network” among one of the ten parts of The Resilience Prescription. Personal connections increase an individual’s personal resilience by providing reliable support in times of trial.

Quality versus quantity

It’s not how many Facebook friends or ‘likes’ you have, it’s how many people are willing to be there for you in a time of crisis. More importantly, which of your 500+ LinkedIn connections and 200 Facebook friends will form part of your support network in times of need? Which ones would you expect to reach out to you in a time of crisis? Such questions can help us evaluate how many of our online connections impact our lives in a positive and supportive manner. Virtual relationships are affecting how people interact with each other, and the experts say they cannot replace real live connections. Consequently, we are losing the ability to be social on a personal one-to-one level because many of us are spending too much time online, gaming or on social media. So how do we manage hyper-connectivity?

First, disconnect digitally

First of all, we need to unplug. More and more people are choosing to “detox” from the virtual world. You may have seen posts that read “taking a few months off facebook, be back in the _______” or “deleting my account now if you need to contact me feel free to drop by”. Even short periods of time away from our electronic devices can provide benefits, especially in the evening when our minds are meant to be winding down. Just having our smartphones in our line of sight can affect our ability to give others our full attention. Part of enhancing our personal resilience includes building healthy interpersonal relationships. While these may start online, more often than not the experts are saying they require ‘face-to-face’ time not ‘Face’ time.

Second, re-connect personally

Building relationships that will enhance our personal resilience is; part effort, part art-form. Some people are just naturally good at connecting with others. They listen intently, genuinely interested in other people, forming strong relational bonds quickly. Others need to work at developing good relationships but, the effort has never been more important. In today’s world resilience has become a critical skill that all people need, and it can be learned at a personal level, implemented at an organisational level and established at a community level but it does require steps to be taken and effort to be made. In conclusion, one step towards increasing your personal resilience is as simple as putting down your smartphone on occasion and spending more quality time with your friends or loved ones. Who wouldn’t benefit from that?

Demographic change, a slo-mo disruption?

Paul Hancock — Tue, 08 May 2018 15:03:18 +0000

If it’s not one thing it’s the next.

It’s 5pm and the coffee shop at the corner of my street has just shut. There’s still plenty of customers in the neighbourhood with tourists, commuters and locals, but the owner has been struggling to get staff, and the only sensible solution is to close early. Staff are the core of any business, without them we all might as well shut up shop and go home. However across many economies, organisations are struggling to recruit and retain staff against multiple headwinds of demographic change which are global in nature but local in impact.

Ageing populations and generational change.

Is this a real problem for the resilience of organisations? Forty countries now have shrinking working populations according to a recent Economist article so the traditional labour pool for hospitality businesses of younger people is shrinking. And it’s not just Europe but it’s world-wide. While the population is aging the proportions of each generation in the workforce is changing. As baby boomers retire, millennials and centennials will become larger proportions of the workforce with their different skill sets and aspirations shaped by their experiences in their formative years. Depending on where you are this could mean 1 in 3 staff will fall into these groups by 2020 and 75% by 2025 according to Forbes. So less younger workers and their changed outlooks mean this is a slow motion and continuing disruption to every organisation now and in the future.

It’s all in the mind.

All disruptions are an opportunity for an organisation which is resilient, and preparing for them is key. 50% of children born today will live to over 100. Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott’s book about living and working in an age of longevity ‘The 100 year Life ‘ is one possible approach for us all. Serial careers, lifelong learning, family, health and wealth are all impacted by increase lifespans. Organisations need to adapt as well, older workers may not be as physically fit but bring reliability and experience while younger staff bring vitality and tech savvy working. A family friend went to work 2 days a week for B&Q, the national DIY retail chain after retiring as company director. Who wouldn’t trust him to offer advice on the right tool or fitting for a home improvement project? On the other hand younger workers increasingly find difficulty affording housing so one hospitality business in Palo Alto attracted staff with discounted accommodation. Another business had reverse mentoring with younger workers mentoring the more senior executives, especially around new technology and social trends.

So how to prepare for demographic change?

Accepting these changes are happening already mean that baby boomers like myself need to view things in the workplace differently. There are a whole raft of possible and practical ways to address this and build resilience depending on your circumstances, but for me these come down to three key things;

Creating a workplace culture which is deliberately diverse in age, gender and ability, not only reduces the risk to the organisation but taps into the widest possible workforce and range of talents.
Making positive changes to workplace practices and facilities to support the culture means that each individual is valued, retained for longer and is more effective day to day.
Removing barriers to enable each generation to play its part according to individual ability and need whether they are practical or less tangible such as housing, re-training or flexible working.

Resilience of organisations means that all aspects must work together effectively, in a changing world creating advantage from disruption will ensure the organisation is sustained, and can thrive and grow. I believe building resilience into your organisation’s workplace will prepare it for demographic change so you don’t have to close early!.

Risk forecasting, mirage or science?

Paul Hancock — Wed, 02 May 2018 13:57:53 +0000

Should auld acquaintance be forgot.

At the start of every year there is a natural desire to look back at the past months and look forward to the year ahead. This human trait has become as much a part of our professional as our personal lives. Each year the World Economic Forum publish their global risk report where a large group of experts rank the top global risks and identify trends which will amplify them. Like other experts and businesses, we similarly take the opportunity to pass comment based on our views and what may prove valuable or interesting to our clients. Indeed risk forecasting has become an industry in it’s own right with tech start ups, expert consultants to guide your every move and widely accepted approaches. Are these risk forecasting approaches a science or a mirage used to confirm leaders pre-existing bias?

Risk Forecasting for Knowns and Unknowns.

Predicting future events based on past performance is something we all do. I expect bad weather in the winter, after all, I am based in Scotland. But I don’t expect structural damage to my house from high winds because we just don’t get hurricane force winds. Donald Rumsfeld famously paraphrased this.

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

Risk forecasting usually focuses on known unknowns, for instance looking at previous year’s data to assess the number of snow days, the depth of snowfall and the impact of these had on the organisation last time. All very well, but should you take the mean?, the greatest snowfall depth?, how many workdays were lost? ,need I continue?. What has changed in the interim?, have you moved office?, is there a longer term trend hidden by the data?, did you actually keep records of the true impacts? At this point the experienced leader throws his hands up and makes a decision, since any decision is better than none, right?

Risk Forecasting to Resilience Thinking.

It makes real sense to plan for events which are likely, indeed preparing for disruptions is key to an effective response. But if we are relying on experience of individual leaders, how does this work in a world where everything is increasingly complex, volatile, uncertain and very definitely ambiguous?. Forecasting trends over longer periods such as the Financial Times special report ‘Ten years out’ is even more difficult, making business planning very uncertain.

As a first step improving our prediction of things we do know, the Known Unknowns and its shy sibling the Unknown Known (something known by an individual or part of an organisation which is not more widely known). Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner give some useful pointers with a ten step process increasingly used in forecasting events by agencies such as IARPA, improving prediction rates by a massive 78% over experts. Use of best practice publications from industry and government such as ISO and BS standards which draw experience from broad constituencies, can be effective for well understood processes.

Dealing with unknown unknowns is more complex. Firstly, are they really completely unknown or just some elements, breaking them down into smaller problems can be effective and often a discovery process makes them unknown knowns. Accepting the fact that no leader can prepare for every eventuality, nor afford it, the focus must move from events to outcomes. For example if your workforce is unable to come to work for whatever reason what is an acceptable outcome?. Do you accept a slightly longer response for customers during the disruption or do you need to consider building in additional flexibility or redundancy. Resilience thinking moves away from causes of disruption to how to respond and create new opportunity. Building this adaptive capacity will benefit the known unknown disruptions as well as the unknown unknown’s. Resilience comprises a broad range of capabilities and no organisation is the same, so developing this mindset is a continuing effort rather than a one time, off the shelf one size fits all solution.

So Mirage or Science?

It would be nice to say one or the other because as an engineer leaving a grey area doesn’t sit well with me. In reality it’s both, leaders need to understand the limits of their forecasting abilities, use best practice for known unknowns, and embrace the need to prepare for unknowns. By preparing in advance, an organisations vitality is sustained, and it can thrive and grow in the face of disruption.

Adaptive capability and making a drama out of a crisis.

Paul Hancock — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 16:22:49 +0000

The complexity of today’s business environment frequently means we fail to make connections which may improve our organisations resilience by creating adaptive capability. A personal incident however often throws these connections into sharper relief allowing us to re-examine them in a different light. Last week our boiler at home failed its annual service, for some this would spell disaster, perhaps sadly for me, it was an opportunity to think about adaptive capacity.

Creating the right sort of capability

The boiler in question supplies both the hot water and heating to our home and in Scotland both elements are still very much in demand in April. So how was the impending disaster averted? A mix of measures turned the failure into an inconvenience;

Being aware of the boilers inherent complexity and our reliance on it, meant we had a full parts and service contract already in place with a specialist provider.
We had alternative means of heating via newly refurbished open fireplace and freestanding electric heaters.
We were able to use the shower in a neighbouring property.
Our dishwasher uses a cold feed water supply, and our kitchen utensils are all dishwasher proof.

All of these measures meant we had built in adaptive capacity to an essential service. So when we were told that the relevant parts were on order and could be fitted within a day or two, it was no great drama. Each of these measures has a cost which needs to be weighed carefully, but if put in place in advance is frequently insignificant and brings other benefits. By getting the boiler serviced annually it reduces my fuel bills, having an open fireplace means in extremis we can go ‘off-grid’ entirely and reduces the size of heating system we need for really cold weather saving the capex of a larger system. By knowing our neighbours it was easy to ask to take a shower prior to my client meeting and by making smart purchase decisions on kitchen utensils as they were renewed I no longer need to spend time at the sink!

But surely this can’t work in organisations?

Or can it? Now I started thinking of examples of how you can include the right adaptive capabilities into any organisation and indeed create some new opportunities.

Creating or using a product-as-a-service rather than a traditional purchase or lease model. Rolls Royce has created a new business model which provides aircraft engine use as a service rather than purchase as a commodity by providing maintenance, energy efficiency and replacement parts much the same way as my boiler for what is a vastly more complex machine.
Diversifying of supply chain partnerships or reconfigurable production methods using agile manufacturing techniques used by Benetton and Primark. These give the ability to respond more effectively to disruption and more importantly customer demands for the latest trend or value added bespoke product lines.
Mutual support agreements such as overhead power line workers in the power sector to allow response to an extreme event or via intermediaries such as trade associations. Often trade associations give advance warning of disruption as they see a broader picture of markets and provide a non-adversarial forum. One conversation I had with a competitor at my trade association was around a problem they were experiencing with materials behaviour following formulation changes due to legislative changes which banned lead in electrical components in the UK.
Consider how to configure teams, departments and operating units to allow for islanding during disruption, where they know the objectives and carry on independently while the new ‘normal’ is established. This mission command or Auftragstaktik approach created by the Prussians is still used by the military today especially special forces and by the retailer Walmart in response to Hurricane Katrina described in the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gwande.

Prior preparation of adaptive capability is the key takeaway.

What is clear to me is that to prevent disruption becoming a crisis, prior preparation is required to build adaptive capability. It’s not just a narrow view but one that covers all aspects of an organisation and its operating environment, and its likely to be a combination of approaches. Resilience is all about preparing for unknown disruptions and creating opportunities from them. I certainly expect to see more organisations take resilience thinking into their strategic planning by actively making choices and not be forced into ineffective and costly kneejerk responses. Those businesses that ignore it are less likely to survive while those who embrace it will create new competitive advantage.

How community resilience can build resilient organisations

Paul Hancock — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 14:34:38 +0000

Organisations don’t exist in a vacuum

The neighbourhood in which I live and work has recently been undergoing some major infrastructure work which has tested our community resilience. Our Victorian sewage system is being replaced and along with it many of the buried services along the same major transport route leading from the city centre. Never pleasant, on top of developments in the recent past including a new transport interchange and a city wide tram system, the feelings of the locals are understandably running high. The neighbourhood is a real mix with residential, small and large businesses and not-for-profit organisations creating a great place to live and work, being voted one of the best places to live in the UK on a regular basis.

But city centre living has it’s challenges and our neighbourhood is no exception. Pressures created by diverted traffic, visitors during the world famous festival, and changes in the status quo of the neighbourhood such as Airbnb have led to making this a less great place. So why is this important to organisations? It seems a statement of the obvious, but our communities are the ecosystem in which our organisation is an integral part. Without it our organisation probably won’t function well, if at all. Organisation’s staff provide the local sandwich bars custom allowing them to focus on their core raison d’etre by not providing duplicate canteen facilities. Residential areas provide local places to live which need retail and leisure facilities for residents providing employment. It’s a virtuous circle.

This virtuous circle is under a little stress at the moment with all of the disruptions which led me to think about how important community resilience is to organisations and how it can be strengthened.

A Win-Win.

The local MP Christine Jardine called a community meeting to discuss the ongoing disruption, with local businesses, residents, businesses and City council officials all invited. Understanding each other’s perspectives, why certain approaches had been taken and its impact was a cathartic experience for the 30 plus attendees. A local café Cuchina LC opened especially for the meeting, like other small businesses it was directly impacted by the disruption with a loss of footfall by some 30% in the area. Being a good local citizen is however a win-win for any organisation according to Ready Scotland.

build a loyal customer base, who know they can rely on you in times of need;
strengthen your relationship with staff who live locally;
generate positive word of mouth for your business, through providing services during difficult times or helping get things back to normal; and
develop partnerships with other forward-thinking organisations, who may be future customers or partners.

Another recent example of this was a business MA Ventures in the Scottish Highlands using surplus tarmac to repair potholes in roads around his community that the local council did not have the budget to repair. The business had previously had a couple of incidents with potholes which had caused costly damage and also had to pay to dispose of the surplus material left over at the end of contracts. It might not be cost neutral, but with just a small extra labour cost, it is a real bonus to the community where they operate.

Potholed roads – a cost or opportunity?

Creating a tipping point.

Getting involved doesn’t always need facilities or resources, simple things can make a real difference creating the tipping point described by the author Malcolm Gladwell in his book. By taking an interest in the local area such as reporting a broken light to the council who are unlikely to spot it for some time prevents permission being granted to drop litter, graffiti, or even commit more serious crime. This downward spiral in a neighbourhood called the ‘Broken Windows Theory’ can be reversed by taking often simple measures, in New York, metro crime dropped by 75% by focusing on things like removing graffiti. Crime in a neighbourhood affects organisations in 3 ways directly i.e. theft, indirectly via local taxes, and simply through fear such as reducing footfall custom or getting good staff.

Probably the most positive effect of engaging with the local community was creating a shared spirit by getting to know each other better. If there is a problem it’s a lot easier to approach someone you know, only yesterday one of the local shops asked me for a recommendation for a tradesman as they knew we had recently had some work done. Many towns and cities in the UK now have business improvement districts (BID’s) where local organisations have voted for an additional levy and get access to more central funding to improve the local district and also act as a sign post to shared resources.

Building community resilience.

The recent poor weather in the UK exposed many weaknesses in our response to disruption, building community resilience is one concrete way we can create a more resilient organisation. By preparing ahead of disruption, communities and the organisations they contain can resist disruption, respond effectively and make positive changes as a result. How are you working to build your community resilience?

Disruptions usually start small and look insignificant.

Paul Hancock — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 15:36:31 +0000

A Road Trip

A long road trip often provides the opportunity for me to reflect, my recent Easter visits to family and friends gave me the luxury of a chance to think. Disruptions to business by their very nature have some element of the unknown, whether timing, location, what they might be or their eventual impact. Every sector and organisation is subject to them and preparing and benefiting from them is what resilience is all about, but they often start small and appear insignificant.

20-20 Rear View

Hindsight is a marvellous thing and usually we can convince ourselves after the event that we spotted something coming long before the experts, I am no exception in this regard!
At the end of March Jaguar Land Rover announced a £1.2million deal with Waymo to sell their new electric vehicle the I-Pace. Not massive compared to many in the automotive sector which is why it probably slipped under most radars. Stopping at the somewhat dated service station I noticed a new group of electric vehicle chargers, which during our meal had just the one user.What struck me apart from the obvious lack of users were;

A typical charge for a Tesla is 40 minutes. A captive premium client base and yet there was no pedestrian crossing to the services nor a coffee place adjacent.
The chargers were restricted to motorway users, the access to the local community was just for staff, valuable customers were therefore excluded.
Disruptions often feel a little ridiculous and these 14 charging stations certainly felt a bit lonely but the JLR/Waymo deal suggests that electric vehicles are about to be more common and may have reached a tipping point.

A Different Perspective of Disruptions.

Disruptions are often seen as bad, to be avoided and minimised, resilience is about more than just weathering disruption but seeing it as an opportunity. Clayton Christensen has written about why innovation often appears no threat to incumbents, and my Easter trip underlines the lessons.

Always keep one eye on emerging trends before they become overwhelming. Your new competition will take only a small un-attractive piece of the market at the beginning.
The shape of new markets is unlikely to be the same, so be prepared to adapt your business model.
The focus on business as usual is no longer good enough to be successful, existing managements often struggle to deal with both loss making disruption and current profit centres.

Resilience is all about preparing for unknown disruptions and creating advantage from them. I certainly expect to see more change as this trend unfolds, some businesses ignore it and others adapt and thrive.

3 Lessons in Business Resilience from Easter Island

Paul Hancock — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:37:55 +0000

A Unique Ecosystem

Easter Island gives me a unique opportunity to draw valuable and relevant conclusions for business resilience and organisations generally in today’s complex and uncertain world. The striking landscapes and stone Moai on Easter Island make for a memorable and thought-provoking experience like few others. I recently had the good fortune to visit this unique place, first populated by Polynesian voyagers by crossing 4000 miles of ocean, via a mere 6-hour flight from Santiago, Chile. Isolated by ocean, the island is a virtual petri dish which allows for observation of resilience of a completely unconnected system. I found it deeply impactful seeing first-hand the consequences of system fragility created by optimisation, the clarion call of cost cutting management.

The Journey from the Past

The landscape I saw was very different from that which met those first to colonise Rapa Nui as the island is known in the local language. A previously sub-tropical wooded island was now hills of rolling grass, rock strewn fields and with only 45 separate species of native flora, reminding me of the hills of Laos which are still defoliated from Agent Orange. So, what caused the 22mile long previously uninhabited island’s population to rise to some 20,000 and then collapse to around 100 in 1887?

The settler’s community prospered and grew, adapting to their unique environment. With rainwater the only source of fresh water, the very visible rock-strewn fields are actually mulched with volcanic pumice which acts like sponges providing surprisingly good irrigation. They developed belief and social systems based on ancestors, the Moai being the visible remains to today’s visitor. With no metal tools on the island they made a pragmatic and collaborative choice of Moai carved from softer stone using harder stone and then moved them across the island from a single quarry where the softer stone was available.

As the increasingly agricultural economy grew, environmental degradation appears to have been deliberately undertaken, much like the slash and burn policies I have seen in recent years in Asia and similarly the Amazon. Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo suggested the accidental introduction of rats by the settlers might alternatively have been the primary cause of the rapid decline of forests. Whatever the cause, as the last trees were felled, the island became a closed ecosystem as ships could no longer be built.

As to the results?

There are two hypotheses, both catastrophic but the same end, including war, disease, slavery and death of almost every man, woman and child of the 20,000 population.

The traditional view first suggested by Thor Heyerdahl and more recently Jared Diamond is of ecocide leading to famine and breakdown of social order. The following civil war, overthrowing of the Moai as each village was levelled and finally leading to a complete new belief and social system being established.

A more recent view is even more disturbing, with disease and social order breakdown following the discovery by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter day in 1722. Over the following 2 centuries these included diseases such as syphilis, forced labour, outright slavery, and the nail in the coffin being the colonial policies of sheep farming and ghettoization of the residual inhabitants in a single town.

Insights for Business Resilience today.

The 3 lessons for organisations I draw from my visit are fairly clear whichever hypothesis you subscribe to. Optimisation on its own is a strategy which can lead to catastrophic consequences.

Inward focus on efficiencies must not be at the expense of the outwards view in order to be resilient in the long term. New entrants to a market can prove catastrophic to incumbents who are inward looking. The disruptions are likely to be unexpected in timing, with novel features and can act cumulatively or explosively on the fragilities of the organisation created in the drive for an optimum in a static or slow-moving environment.

Growth led by short term and localised tactical decision making may ultimately destroy the very ecosystem on which it was founded. There are often unintended consequences of introducing change, especially to optimise, in closed systems that are not always obvious at first. Local leaders necessarily make decisions based on what is best for their unit and are incentivised to do so, however these may create systemic risk to the organisation as a whole.

Innovation is essential to grow and often necessity is the mother of invention in the face of disruption or adversity. The settlers made use of pumice for irrigation and today’s islanders make a living from their unique history and environment. We have many opportunities which are yet to be discovered, however sustainable and regenerative business strategies are essential in the future as we are unable to continue to consume the worlds natural resources at same rate as previous generations.

In Conclusion

The questions I ask are; will we continue to optimise as we see it today without considering the future and continue blindly with business as usual? Or will we learn the lessons of maintaining outward views, incentivising the correct decisions and creating sustainable innovation strategies to build resilience into our organisations?

Resilience 101. Sustain, thrive and grow your organisation.

Jason Valette — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 10:59:49 +0000

Resilience – The new advantage

We believe organisation’s need a resilience vision to sustain, grow and be successful in the long run. How? By building strength to maintain their vitality, enhance resilience capabilities to respond effectively and to take advantage of disruption. In today’s world, it’s a strategic imperative.

However building this capacity to sustain, respond and create advantage from change or disruption is rare, this is resilience 101.

The vision of every organisation needs resilience to succeed.
Resilience shouldn’t be restricted to a few global corporations but accessible by all organisations; private, public and not for profit.
Resilience isn’t just a buzzword; it is intentionally built with real and tangible capabilities.
Every organisation is unique and so is what it needs to be resilient.
Leaders need to make resilience a strategic issue and part of the DNA of the organisation.
Resilience should be at the heart of every decision, be systematic, holistic and evidence-based.
Building resilience is collaborative, ongoing and gives voice to diverse expertise both inside and outside the organisation.
Resilience thinking can be taught and learned to create a mindset and a culture which is not only ready but thrives on disruption and change.

Leadership – the essential ingredient

Resilience isn’t new; many successful organisations are resilient, some by good fortune, others by deliberate effort. It is usually hard won by trial and error, the steady building of experience and learning from failure at both personal and organisational levels. Today’s environment for organisations and their leaders is, however, evolving at an ever-increasing pace, preventing this incremental approach to building resilience. The volatility and uncertainty created by the nature and extent of the growth of technology, societal change and global interconnectedness magnify the vulnerability to each disruption. Resiliency has many dimensions, socio-economic, technological, organisational as well as purely physical capabilities which need to work in concert. Creating success by balancing these capabilities for a specific context requires inspiring leadership willing to be counter-intuitive and at times challenge traditional business wisdom.

A vision of a new reality

Using a unique standardised methodology and research-based tools, any organisation, business, operating unit or department, can understand and explain resilience in their own context, quantify specific capabilities and create an action plan. A mix of free tools paid support packages, bespoke consultancy services and free educational resources means resilience building is within reach of any organisation whatever size, shape or vision.

Creating your resilience advantage

So building resilience is not just a game of chance, it can be understood, measured and improved. Are you taking the next steps to create your resilience advantage?

The author, Jason Valette is a Resilience Consultant at 360 Resilience Ltd. 360resilience.com

The post Resilience 101. Sustain, thrive and grow your organisation. appeared first on 360 Resilience.

360 Resilience

Resilience Thinking – It’s when not if.

Starting from the beginning

The Cynefin Model – Snowdon and Kurtz

Is it just a blip or more fundamental?

Acute Disruption – Sheffi and Rice

Chronic Disruption – Scheffer, et al.

A resilience thinking perspective

Further Reading:

The author, Paul Hancock is a Founding Partner at 360 Resilience Ltd. 360resilience.com

Decision making on the shifting sands of the facts.

A fact learned is forever.

Decisions based on our world view.

Getting right to the (right) facts.

A prescription for factfulness.

Opinion

Further Reading;

Is our personal resilience at risk from hyper-connectivity ?

The rise of smartphones

The Upside… we are more connected

The Downside… we are more connected

The risk to organisational resilience

Personal resilience in a hyper-connected world

Quality versus quantity

First, disconnect digitally

Second, re-connect personally

Further Reading:

Demographic change, a slo-mo disruption?

If it’s not one thing it’s the next.

Ageing populations and generational change.

It’s all in the mind.

So how to prepare for demographic change?

Further Reading;

Risk forecasting, mirage or science?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot.

Risk Forecasting for Knowns and Unknowns.

Risk Forecasting to Resilience Thinking.

So Mirage or Science?

Further Reading;

Adaptive capability and making a drama out of a crisis.

Creating the right sort of capability

But surely this can’t work in organisations?

Prior preparation of adaptive capability is the key takeaway.

Further Reading;

How community resilience can build resilient organisations

Organisations don’t exist in a vacuum

A Win-Win.

Creating a tipping point.

Building community resilience.

Further Reading

Disruptions usually start small and look insignificant.

A Road Trip

20-20 Rear View

A Different Perspective of Disruptions.

Further Reading

3 Lessons in Business Resilience from Easter Island

A Unique Ecosystem

The Journey from the Past

As to the results?

Insights for Business Resilience today.

In Conclusion

Further Reading

Resilience 101. Sustain, thrive and grow your organisation.

Resilience – The new advantage

Leadership – the essential ingredient

A vision of a new reality