The Inner Workings Of A Truly Resilient Organization

Organizational resilience is the ability of an organization to survive and progress at an incremental pace without succumbing to unexpected disruptions. It is the capacity of a company or organization to anticipate any changes that might stunt its developmental progress and thrive in the face of unforeseen interruptions.

Organizational resilience is more than just about risk management and ensuring business continuity. It cannot be constrained to a set of frameworks and principles that can be applied to any company. Organizational resilience is unique to every organization. The factors that affect a company and make it more resilient are highly subjective. It is distinctive to each and every organization.

The broader spectrum of Organizational resilience:

An organization like a company or a government should ensure its survivability and anticipate adversities whether it comes internally or through external factors. Traditionally, Business continuity is seen as an effective way to formulate a set of principles that could mitigate potential risk factors and improve organizational performance. The key difference between business continuity and organizational resilience is the fact that the latter is more of a response to threat while the resilience of an organization throws more focus on its “adaptability”. Business continuity is mired with lack of objective proof to support the buy-in from upper level managements. The global managerial mindset is shifting to a point where many businesses have started focusing on the strategic aspect of an organization’s resilience.

Lyndon Bird the technical director of business continuity institute (BCI) suggests that the inability to provide objective proof of progress through BCM might be the reason why organizations have increasingly started adopting a resilient approach.  

The need to apply an effective resilience strategy

Organizational resilience is more than just about adapting to your environment. It also relies on the people in an organization to be more responsive even while enduring the pressure of unanticipated changes. A 2016 statistics by Navex global which surveyed around 644 ethics and compliance professionals shows us that companies provide less training to their board members regarding risk management. This shows the level of laxity that a staggering number of companies and organizations have. This directly correlates to another data which throws light on the above mentioned fact, which is: About 80% of the companies shut down within 18 months entirely due to some sort of internal failure. This calls the need for a focused initiative that reinforces the resilience of an organization.

Better approach through ISO 22301:

The ISO 22301 standardization outlines principles and guidelines that prompt an organization to enhance their preparedness and risk handling capabilities. Business continuity  management extrapolates the responsive nature of a company by providing a framework that makes it inherently more resilient towards threats and potential risk factors that might hinder its development. ISO 22301 empowers the members of an organization to take the necessary steps that ensures the uninterrupted progress of a company’s development.

Objective of a resilient approach:
Apart from the above mentioned points outlining the need to apply organizational resilience it is also prudent to understand the general framework of such a strategy. A resilient strategy is built around the following objectives

• A set of principles are developed to provide a foundation for enhancing an organization’s capacity to handle unexpected disruptions
• To well define the characteristics of an organization that allows the above mentioned principles to be achieved
• To guide the utilization, evaluation and enhancement of attributes for continuous improvement

How ECCI can help you:
ECCI is a Philippines based process improvement consultancy firm and an industry leader in enhancing the organizational performance of a company. We aim to provide guidance to enhance organizational resilience for any size or type of public or private organization by helping them achieve ISO 22301 standards. To know more about how you could improve your organization’s resilience, check out our website at http://www.eccinternational.com/

Ref: https://www.interstaterestoration.com/blog/business-continuity-or-organizational-resilience-growing-debate
https://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2016/07/29/survey-roundup-companies-lagging-on-training-directors/