Introduction
When US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964, he responded: “I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” This description could readily apply to a test for resilience. It could also apply to words like ‘strategy’ and ‘crisis’, ones that defy easy interpretation yet are broadly understood by most people – and certainly pepper written and verbal dialogue today.
As resilience is so widely in use, it is worthwhile considering what it really means. Some argue that a definition is secondary, even superfluous, to the context in which it is applied. Furthermore, the plethora of interpretations offered by official organizations can often confuse or steer practitioners in false directions. Yet, without a clear understanding of the foundational elements – the connecting words can subsequently amplify – there is a danger that resilience can be misunderstood and misapplied. So, this article offers an interpretation that tries to cut to the chase by isolating the key principles.
The Triple A
The short, succinct definition of resilience is the sustainability to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to change – hence, the ‘Triple A’ in the title of this piece.
Alternative descriptions could be preparation to reflect foresight, recovery to reflect hindsight and agility to reflect insight, all in response to change: whether that be a shock or stress, known or unknown, or anything in between. We need to sustain this ability no matter what type of resilience is in focus – personal, emotional, organizational, societal, national, etc.
An even shorter definition could be ‘to survive and thrive’ in adversity but this misses the vital notion of change. Without change brought about by disruption or crisis there would be no need for resilience as we could all carry on in a constant, stable state. Yet, change, especially significant change, forces us to respond and that response means that we often do not return to our previous condition, the status quo ante, but evolve in the face of new circumstances, pressures, or even applying lessons learnt. In so doing, we change internally to some degree – hopefully, becoming wiser and better prepared for the next round of change. This dynamic allows us to bounce forward but not bounce back, particularly as the old state no longer exists; it would be a regressive move even if it were possible.
Anticipate
Preparation is the key to being resilient. It means one is forearmed and hence less likely to be blown off course in a metaphorical storm. It requires both a situational awareness of pending stormy weather and a horizon scan of when and where the particular storm may arrive and what other storms may follow. This is horizon scanning. Materials, people, and resources can then be readied. Yet, we cannot foretell every pending disaster, no matter how good our radar. Events may catch us off guard or predictions prove incorrect – perhaps, people ignore or misinterpret the warning signs.
This is why it is sensible to have generic resilience plans that address a wide range of potential scenarios grouped by broad type, as those plans are likely to contain the basics to fight any new onslaught, known or unknown. Risk-agnostic planning might not meet the demands of traditional risk registers but unpredictability is the new order in a turbulent world (1). What natural disasters happened every century can now occur every year – twice in the same year in the case of recent severe flooding in Switzerland. In fact, enterprise risk management could well be replaced by enterprise resilience management as this would shift the focus from specific causes to broader consequences.
Absorb
Recovery is traditionally associated with crisis management and business continuity, two important skills to have ready. These also require some preparation through training and team building. Effectiveness of recovery will reside on a sound organizational culture or social bonding established well before any disasters. It has been shown that communities with deeper reservoirs of social capital have higher survival rates and faster recovery times in the face of disruption.
When an organization or system is severely upturned, the usual command structure tends to fracture in part or whole. Leaders and key functionaries can be displaced or even lost. This places attention on those who know how to step up and assume control. Yet again, preparation for this comes from training and especially empowerment. The latter depends on people having a clear prior understanding of what the organization’s mission is and how this can be sustained through disruption and without constant guidance. It relies on a pre-ordained release of power from the centre and a loose command network that can accommodate temporary breaks in the chain. A mission-centric approach is one that has proved to work well in highly stressed environments such as the military.
Adapt
Adaptation to change is a key element of resilience, and one that is often forgotten. The notion has been closely associated with climate change but applies to other change opportunities, alongside the concept of mitigation. Simplistically, the latter refers to plugging a leak while adaptation means dealing with the consequences of the leak. So, in climate terms, mitigation is about stopping carbon emissions while adaptation is about carbon capture.
Adaptation can bring opportunities as well as challenges. It can allow people and groups to find new and imaginative ways of working more collaboratively, making them more efficient and competitive. This requires a strong degree of agility to make the most of the opportunities. Removing barriers (silos) and bureaucracy wherever possible means that nimble cross-working becomes the norm. It also encourages empowerment and entrepreneurialism; and embraces innovation and technologies that can accelerate processes and decision making.
In general, large organizations with complex bureaucracies like multinationals and governments have little experience of being, or capacity to be, agile and adaptive. They are often like a super-tanker requiring many nautical miles to change direction. It is at the other end of the spectrum where individuals, teams, and groups, especially first responders to an emergency, tend to show the greatest degree of flexibility to changing circumstances. Regrettably, they often lack the resources or power to transfer their adaptive capacity to larger swathes of society. Both people and groups learn to adapt better when they are organized to be agile.
If adaptation progresses to its full extent, it can be transformative. New entities can arise to take advantage of fresh situations and environments. By way of a simple example, consider the way the film-distribution business has transformed from being through cinemas to video-tapes to DVDs to streaming; each has required a new business model that has been radically different from its predecessor. The greater the change, in this case with technology, the more radical has been the transformation.
Learning from nature
We are not alone on our resilience journey. The natural world displays a high degree of resilience, particularly regarding adaptation: that is the route to evolutionary success. Biological species and ecosystems have over millennia been able to respond to significant change, much of this without planning or tying responses to complex threats. The octopus, for example, is a classic example of an animal that changes its feeding behaviour, skin colour, and defence mechanisms to suit the prevailing situation. The creature simply adapts to solve the challenges it continually faces in order to survive.
Many creatures display several resilience characteristics common with humans such as robustness, resistance, redundancy, and regeneration. The techniques used are many and varied. Some insects undergo radical transformation or metamorphosis in their life cycles: take the change of the caterpillar into the chrysalis and then the butterfly – all designed to take advantage of new food supplies in different environments at different times.
We should take note of these examples to see how we can better prepare, recover, and adapt to change in harmony with a natural world that is also under stress. The world is changing at an accelerating pace and we need to be ready to face the consequences with resilient people and behaviours.
The author
Robert Hall is cofounder and former Executive Director of Resilience First. He is now an independent consultant, writer and speaker.
This article is an extract from the chapter titled ‘Survive and Thrive: What is Resilience?’ in the book Building Resilient Futures (ISBN: 9781035812622, Austin Macauley, 2023). Further extracts will feature in future Resilience Forward articles. More information on transformation will be found in the book Nature’s Resilience which will be released next year.
Reference
(1) The UK Covid-19 Inquiry Report (Module 1) of July 2024 recommends that the UK government ‘moves away from a reliance on single reasonable worst-case scenarios towards an approach that assesses a wider range of scenarios representative of the different risks and the range of each kind of risk’.
