Resilience

Definition

James Cascio:

"Resilience means the capacity of an entity--such as a person, an 
institution, or a system--to withstand sudden, unexpected shocks, 
and (ideally) to be capable of recovering quickly afterwards. 
Resilience implies both strength and flexibility; a resilient 
structure would bend, but would be hard to break." (http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)

Description

Alex Evans and David Steven:

"In formal terms, resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks. (Walker et al, 2004)

Perhaps the best practical definition we have come across is the one offered by the Harvard Business Review. It states that resilience results from being able to face up to reality, improvise in the face of unfamiliar challenges, and at the same time find a source of ‘meaning’ in the challenges that encourages long-term thinking while affirming a sustaining sense of purpose (Coutu, 2002).

Both definitions emphasise the need to change while maintaining a coherent identity. Systems that are brittle, that try to remain static at all costs, are precisely the ones that are most vulnerable to collapse. On the other hand, systems that are flexible, adaptable, that deal with crisis through renewal are the ones that will tend to survive. This is, in other words, a classic collective action problem. The central determinant of a system’s resilience is the ability to act collectively, coherently, and with the right balance between short and long-term interests.

In a high resilience system, risk – and response to that risk – is distributed throughout the system. Individuals and their groups see their interests as compatible with the collective. They have a common understanding of the challenges a society faces and take decisions accordingly, but this understanding is not a straitjacket. Different actors play to the strengths and will often compete fiercely. But there is a balance between initiative and co-ordination, and broad buy-in to overarching institutional frameworks.

In a low resilience system, on the other hand, risks are felt disproportionately by some groups and responses are inadequate, over-centralised, or both. Longer-term interests are heavily discounted, individuals pursue narrow self-interest; and conflict between groups intensifies. As a result, key institutions are increasingly seen as failing to ‘deliver’." (http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf)

Characteristics

James Cascio:

• "Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a 
system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single 
part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes 
from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), 
collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized 
from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively 
respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected 
loss of components.

• The recognition that failure happens is the other intrinsic part of a 
resilience approach. Mistakes, malice, pure coincidence--there's no 
way to rule out all possible ways in which a given system can stumble. 
The goal, therefore, should be to make failures easy to spot through 
widespread adoption of transparency through a "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" embrace of 
openness, and to give the system enough redundancy and slack that it's 
possible to absorb the failures that get through. If you know that you 
can't rule out failure, you need to be able to "fail gracefully," in 
the language of design.
"

(http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)

8 Principles

"1. Diversity: Not relying on a single kind of solution means not suffering from a single point of failure.

2. Redundancy: Backup, backup, backup. Never leave yourself with just one path of escape or rescue.

3. Decentralization: Centralized systems look strong, but when they fail, they fail catastrophically.

4. Collaboration: We're all in this together. Take advantage of collaborative technologies, especially those offering shared communication and information.

5. Transparency: Don't hide your system - transparency makes it easier to figure out where a problem may lie. Share your plans and preparations, and listen when people point out flaws.

6. Fail gracefully: Failure happens, so make sure that a failure state won't make things worse than they are already.

7. Flexibility: Be ready to change your plans when they're not working the way you expected; don't count on things remaining stable.

8. Foresight: You can't predict the future, but you can hear its footsteps approaching. Think and prepare" (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4851)

Conditions for a Resilient World

Brian Walker:

"We are a long way from understanding how to create a resilient world. Nevertheless, it is possible to offer some visions for what a resilient world might look like.

• A resilient world would promote biological, landscape, social and economic diversity. Diversity is a major source of future options and of a system's capacity to respond to change.

• A resilient world would embrace and work with natural ecological cycles. A forest that is never allowed to burn loses its fire-resistant species and becomes very vulnerable to fire.

• A resilient world consists of modular components. When over-connected, shocks are rapidly transmitted through the system - as a forest connected by logging roads can allow a wild fire to spread wider than it would otherwise.

• A resilient world possesses tight feedbacks. Feedbacks allow us to detect thresholds before we cross them. Globalization is leading to delayed feedbacks that were once tighter. For example, people of the developed world receive weak feedback signals about the consequences of their consumption.

• A resilient world promotes trust, well developed social networks and leadership. Individually, these attributes contribute to what is generally termed "social capital," but they need to act in concert to effect adaptability - the capacity to respond to change and disturbance.

• A resilient world places an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules, and embracing change. When rigid connections and behaviors are broken, new opportunities open up and new resources are made available for growth.

• A resilient world has institutions that include "redundancy" in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights. Redundancy in institutions increases the diversity of responses and the flexibility of a system. Because access and property rights lie at the heart of many resource-use tragedies, overlapping rights and a mix of common and private property rights can enhance the resilience of linked social-ecological systems.

• A resilient world would consider all nature's un-priced services – such as carbon storage, water filtration and so on - in development proposals and assessments. These services are often the ones that change in a regime shift – and are often only recognized and appreciated when they are lost."

(http://www.peopleandplace.net/featured_voices/2008/11/24/resilience_thinking)

Example

Smart Grid

"Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a 
system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single 
part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes 
from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), 
collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized 
from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively 
respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected 
loss of components.

A good comparison of the two models can be seen in the contrast 
between the current electricity grid (centralized, with limited diversity) 
and the "smart grid" model being debated (decentralized and highly 
diverse). Today's power grid is brittle, and the combination of a few 
local failures can make large sections collapse; a smart grid has a 
wide variety of inputs, from wind farms to home solar to biofuel 
generators, and its network is designed to handle the churn of local 
power sources turning on and shutting off.
" (http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)

Discussion

Towards a politics of resilience

Alex Evans and David Steven:

"The politics of resilience, then, presents a challenging agenda – one that takes us far beyond how well we respond to localised natural disasters.

In a complex and unstable world, it helps join up our thinking about a series of disparate challenges and provides a clear rationale for collective action. As Robert Cooper has argued: ‘If states are to retain control, the first condition is that they should make peace with each other so that they can face the common threat of disorder together’ (Cooper, 2003).

Facing common threats will require much more than goodwill, however. At present, all arms of international relations are in crisis. Military forces are struggling to understand a world where war is usually ‘amongst the people’, to use Rupert Smith’s phrase (Smith, 2005). Development agencies are having to accept that poverty reduction cannot simply be accomplished by the transfer of resources. Many diplomatic services, meanwhile, badly need to renew their ‘theory of influence’ in a world where issues trump geography, and non-state actors are an increasingly powerful force. Fundamental reform cannot happen in one country alone.

Instead governments need to work together to develop approaches that are integrated and interoperable. The starting point is greater ‘shared awareness’ of the nature of the threats that accompany globalisation, and an honest admission of the limits to government power (Evans and Steven, 2008). This should then encourage governments to reach out in two directions – upwards towards the international system, and downwards towards the world’s citizens.

But this is not simply a neutral question of governance; it is also a fundamentally political agenda. The politics of resilience holds both good and bad news for all major streams of political thinking: conservative, liberal and social democratic.

For conservatives, resilience’s appeal to tradition and identity is a strong one. However, the conservative instinct to resist change of all kinds is a clear threat to a system’s ability to adapt. Two quotes from the conservative philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, capture this dichotomy well. On the one hand, he writes that: In place of a preconceived purpose … such a society will find its guide in a principle of continuity (which is a diffusion of power between past, present and future) and in a principle of consensus (which is a diffusion of power between the different legitimate interests of the present).

On the other:

Change is a threat to identity, and every change is an emblem of extinction … Changes, then, have to be suffered, and a man of conservative temperament (that is, one strongly disposed to preserve his identity) cannot be indifferent to them. (Oakeshott, 1991)

Liberals, meanwhile, have long argued for the diffusion of power. As Hayek argued, centralised control is not possible over systems ‘which no brain has designed but which [have] grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals’ (Hayek, 1974). He, after all, was awarded a Nobel prize over thirty years ago for his ‘penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena’. Classical liberalism, however, has consistently been troubled by government attempts to create public goods. The result is an instinctive opposition to regulation, which leaves little room for attempts to manage unstable global systems.

Social democrats, finally, understand the importance of public goods and are prepared to act forcefully to protect the vulnerable. They are also willing to act boldly to manage global instability. However, they have the weakness of being instinctive meddlers, crowding out the initiative of other actors and risking over-centralisation in the face of distributed risks. This is a time when states will be under pressure to take on new, and onerous, responsibilities, such as taking responsibility for regulating carbon and other scarce resources. Unprecedented institutional innovation will be needed if these responsibilities are to be discharged without imposing unsustainable levels of cost. It is surely therefore time to put the ‘nanny state’ out of her misery, while we search for a more sustainable relationship between government and state.

In the end, resilience is about a politics that is ‘progressive’ in a pure sense. Rather than following the ideological imprint of a bygone age, we need to be prepared to take a broad view of the systems that we depend on – and re-order our priorities to ensure that every action we take helps strengthen and defend them. That takes courage, and a farsighted vision of the future. The question is not ‘what risks do we want to avoid?’ but ‘what do we want to be resilient for?’" (http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf)

Six principles of organizational resilience

Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz:

"More recently, Ceridian Corporation collected best thinking and strategies to publish an executive briefing on organizational resilience. They highlighted the paradox that successful, resilient organizations are those that are able to respond to two conflicting imperatives:

• managing for performance and growth, which requires consistency, efficiency, eliminating waste, and maximizing short-term results

• managing for adaptation, which requires foresight, innovation, experimentation, and improvisation, with an eye on long-term benefits

Most organizations pay great attention to the first imperative but little to the second. Start-ups often excel at improvisation and innovation but founder on the shoals of consistent performance and efficiency. About half of all new companies fail during their first five years.

Each mode requires a different skill set and organizational design. Moving nimbly between them is a tricky dynamic balancing act. Disruptions can come from anywhere – from within, from competitors, infrastructure or supply chain crises, or from human or natural disasters. The financial crisis has riveted current attention, but it’s just one of many disruptions organizations must cope with daily. Planning for disruption means shifting from “just-in-time” production and efficiency to “just-in-case” resilience.

We draw from these two studies, and others, to develop what we call the six habits of highly resilient organizations.

1. Resilient organizations actively attend to their environments.

Monitoring internal and external indicators of change is a means of identifying disruptions in advance. Resilient organizations seek out potentially disturbing information and test it against current assumptions and mental models. They work to detect the unexpected so they can respond quickly enough to exploit opportunity or prevent irreversible damage. In short, they anticipate to be prepared.

“[T]he two questions that keep coming up in almost every speech, panel, and hallway conversation,” reports Arianna Huffington from this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, “are ‘what went wrong?’ and ‘how did we miss the signals?’ The consensus conclusions: 1) Too much faith in the free market. 2) Too much faith in economic models. 3) Too little transparency. 4) No moral compass.”

2. Resilient organizations prepare themselves and their employees for disruptions.

Attentive preparations build a team that imagines possibilities and displays inventiveness in solving problems. Managers know how and when to allow employees to manage themselves for focused productivity as well as adaptive innovation. Resilient organizations cross-train employees in multiple skills and functions. They know that when people are under pressure, they tend to revert to their most habitual ways of responding.

After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Morgan Stanley, the largest employer at the WTC, realized it was operating in a highly symbolic building and began emergency preparedness with detailed plans and drills. On September 11, 2001 it had three recovery sites at the ready where employees could congregate and continue business. They began evacuating about 2700 employees one minute after the first plane hit, and their offices across 22 floors were almost empty when the second plane hit. They lost only six people. According to their 2001 Annual Report, investments in redundant computing and communication technology made after the 1993 WTC bombing also played a significant role in this successful recovery.

3. Resilient organizations build in flexibility.

Even while executing for lean and mean performance, resilient organizations build in cushions against disruptions. The most obvious approach is the development of redundant systems – backup capacity, larger inventories, higher staffing levels, financial reserves, and the like. But those are costly and not always efficient. Flexibility is a better approach.

Engaging suppliers and their networks in devising makeshift solutions to temporary disruptions is a flexibility strategy. So are policies that encourage flexibility in when and where work is done. Employees who are used to telework and virtual workspaces adapt more quickly and are more productive following a crisis. In addition, research shows that flexible work practices contribute to greater employee resilience, productivity, and commitment, and to lower levels of stress.

In 1997, a fire at an Aisin factory in Japan destroyed most of the precision machine tools used to manufacture the P-valve used in rear brakes to prevent skidding. Toyota got 99% of its P-valves from Aisin. As a just-in-time manufacturer, Toyota had only a couple of days’ valves in its plants. While the fire was still burning, Toyota and Aisin immediately collaborated to make emergency requests of their networks of suppliers. Aisin helped other suppliers improvise different production techniques, providing them with detailed plans and technical support. Two days after the fire, the first valves came off the production line, and a week later, Toyota’s production line was back to normal. Two months later, Aisin resumed production at pre-fire levels.

4. Resilient organizations strengthen and extend their communications networks – internally and externally.

A robust and redundant communications infrastructure holds up in a crisis. Social networks among employees at resilient organizations are rich, varied, and visible. People who have trust relationships and personal support systems at work and with friends and family are much more able to cope with stress and change.

Good connections and communications also apply to external relationships with suppliers and customers. A key is to recognize what’s important to meet organizational goals and to listen to those with needed expertise and ideas wherever they are in the value web.

Resilient organizations use networked communications to distribute decision-making. As much as possible, they push decisions down to where they can be made most effectively and thus quickly. This in turn requires good access to information at all levels of the organization.

After Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in 1992, the state reassessed its preparedness and greatly expanded its planning to include stakeholders from every level of government, as well as organizations in the private sector, non-profits, and faith-based groups. These organizations came together to cooperate and collaborate, addressing the complex problems that none of them could solve by themselves. This Florida “megacommunity” was prepared for Hurricane Katrina, unlike localities on the Gulf Coast. In fact, within hours of Katrina’s landfall, more than 3700 of Florida’s first responders were deployed to affected areas.

5. Resilient organizations encourage innovation and experimentation.

In times of great uncertainty and unpredictability, the success and failure of small-scale experiments can help map a path to the future. Resilient organizations engage in market research, product development, and ongoing operations and service improvements. They invest in small experiments and product trials that carry low costs of failure.

UPS tells its drivers to do whatever it takes to deliver packages on time. They encourage improvisation to solve all the small things that can go wrong every day. At the same time, they have clear rules and regulations, such as always putting their keys in the same place, closing truck doors the same way, making only right turns 90% of the time to save time and fuel, and so on. Those routines, combined with creative improvisation, allowed UPS to deliver packages the day after Hurricane Andrew struck, even to people temporarily living in their cars.

Resilient organizations foster a culture of continuous innovation and ingenuity to solve problems and adapt to challenges. A side benefit is that employees who believe they can influence events that affect their work and lives are more likely to be engaged, committed, and act in positive ways associated with resilience. Some organizations also have internal idea markets to surface new ideas and innovations. Others use “crowdsourcing” to engage people externally in solving a given problem. Eli Lilly's Innocentive Open Innovation Marketplace is perhaps the best example.

6. Resilient organizations cultivate a culture with clearly shared purpose and values.

When an organization’s sense of purpose is shared by its employees, suppliers and customers, those networks can provide flexibility to help it through a disruption. Engaged employees will seek out opportunities to try new approaches, find creative solutions, and achieve great results.

A University of Michigan study of major airlines in the aftermath of September 11 found that those whose market value rebounded shared two characteristics: (1) they maintained their commitments to employees, and (2) they had adequate financial reserves. Others went bankrupt or out of business. Instead of layoffs or canceling severance packages and employee benefits, the resilient ones did everything they could to preserve employee relationships and loyalty. Financial reserves and a strong sense of purpose and organizational values made that possible." (http://www.peopleandplace.net/perspectives/2009/2/2/six_habits_of_highly_resilient_organizations)

Source

1. Risks and resilience in the new global era. By Alex Evans and David Steven. Renewal Vol. 17, No.1

URL = http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf

More Information

See John Robb's proposition for Resilient Communities

Also:

1. Coutu, D. L. (2003) ‘How Resilience Works’ in Harvard Business Review on Building Personal

and Organizational Resilience, Boston, Harvard Business School Press.

1. Tainter, J. (1988) The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
2. Walker, B. et al (2004) ‘Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological

Systems’ in Ecology and Society 9 (2) Art 5.

1. Walker, B. and Salt, D. (2006) Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a

Changing World, Washington, Island Press.