Management Perspectives

When Eric Yuan moved to USA in 1997 after being rejected for a visa eight times, he arrived in the country armed with nothing more than conviction and a dream. He was sure that the internet was going to bring many disruptions in the market and that he wanted to be in the right place when that happened. He soon moved on to make his own collaboration platform called Zoom in 2011.

How did a relatively new entrant in a marketplace dominated by giants like Cisco, Google, and Skype become the platform of choice for millions of people across the globe to collaborate in a remote work environment?

The answer lies in the commitment of a frugal and prudent founder to make a lightweight, easyto-use service that would make physical presence in any meeting simply a matter of discretion. Yuan kept his ears close to the ground, learnt from others’ mistakes, used his pursuit of simplicity as an agile weapon, and mastered the art of resilience amidst stiff competition and many hurdles.

Change comes in many shapes and forms and history has taught us that disaster and crises occur far more frequently now than ever.

Few of us are able to change the environment in which we operate; we can only control how we prepare for and respond to it. Resilience has moved from being highly desirable to extremely crucial for organizations. In fact, resilience and agility are the only two factors that will make it easier for businesses to survive the inevitable downturn that is staring us in our faces.

Resilient organisations begin with resilient teams that are made of resilient individuals. While it is easier to judge it as a characteristic in individuals, it becomes a daunting task to make groups of people resilient, especially when motivations are down and people are working remotely.

Business plans and strategies go out of the window in extraordinary times. Domain specific knowledge and well-defined job roles do not matter in uncertain times. What matters is people who are determined to power through, skillsets that are fluid, and determination that is unshaken in the face of adversity.

It is clear that the fate of an organisation facing adversity can be profoundly affected by the trajectories its employees follow. How, then, can organisations minimise the impact of delayed and chronic responses to adversity and emerge unscathed through devastating times? The easy and hard answer to that is by building resilience.

Resilience is a deep-rooted attribute that trickles down to employees through the senior leaders and culture of the organisation.

In uncertain, unforeseen events like the COVID-19 outbreak, what does resilience in an organisation look like?
- A focussed sense of urgency in responding to new developments and preparation for worse case scenarios by pivoting to new products, making hard decisions and implementing them swiftly;
- Agile leaders who keep their minds open for any and all possibilities and understand that some of them might not work as expected;
- Empowered employees who display leadership in their roles despite their seniority;
- Time not wasted on activities that cannot be measured in times of uncertainty. They play on their areas of strength and are quick to learn new tricks to retain the cash flows;
- Prudent, well-informed, and realistic analysis about the impact of the dynamic marketplace scenarios on their product and models. Similarly, individuals with high resilience demonstrate a unique combination of attitudes and behaviours:

They maintain a positive attitude;
• They are confident in their skills and abilities;
• They cope well with challenges;
• They recover quickly from crisis at work;
• They absorb lessons from adversity that they use to grow and improve future performance.

A Dale Carnegie study confirmed a number of those positive outcomes of resilience at work. Highly resilient employees are:
- More than twice as willing to consistently give their best efforts at work;
- Significantly, more likely to feel relatively free of serious stress at work, reporting that they rarely or never felt stress.

Interestingly, a Dale Carnegie survey found that age or type of employment had little effect on resilience of individuals. This means that irrespective of an employee’s age or status (freelance/full time), they can display the much needed attributes required to be resilient. Which begs the question, what is it that influences resilience in individuals and more importantly, organisations?

According to a Dale Carnegie White Paper, rather than being an innate trait that people have or do not have, resilience is the result of a process that combines individual traits, attitudes, and behaviours together with work-related environmental factors, many of which can be developed or modified to strengthen resilience in individuals, teams, and the entire organisation. In turbulent times that are unprecedented and disruptive, there are a few sure ways that leaders can use to build resilience in the workforce.

- Be socially intelligent and manage expectations accordingly. Times like the COVID-19 pandemic are extraordinary in nature and bring with them great emotional stress. Now, more than ever, leaders must display social intelligence by being there for the team and saying the right things when they matter the most. Leaders must manage their expectation from the employees and refrain from stressing them with unachievable deadlines and deliverables.

- Work on relationships. Of the respondents in the Dale Carnegie study who consistently felt all three emotions (connected, valued, and empowered) 77 per cent were highly resilient, nearly double the rate of high resilience (41 per cent) among all others. Leaders must make time to show sincere appreciation, and build transparent relationships with their employees even when they maybe working virtually.

- Reinforce the organisational purpose. A shared organisational purpose can be the binding force even when employees work from remote worksites. A purpose provides a valuable sense of orientation and meaning, especially in times of adversity. This is reiterated in the findings of the survey; of those who could not strongly agree that they have a sense of purpose at work, only one-third manage to be highly resilient

- Provide adequate resources. Many employees are struggling with a lack of resources when their work environment changes almost overnight. In fact, there were a substantial number in the Dale Carnegie survey (about three in 10) who acknowledged a problem in this area by responding in a neutral or negative way regarding resources. Of those, only 27 per cent were highly resilient.

- Foster a learning culture. Employees who routinely share knowledge and information are shown to be highly resilient (78 per cent) compared to others. Learning keeps the organisation agile and ensures that employees have the skillsets required to pivot to new products and roles.

- The path to resilience is never a straightforward one. There are contrasting elements and tough decisions that have to be made by leaders that might hamper the short-term efforts of building a resilient workforce. But for organisations to survive stormy times like these, the foundation has to be strong and worked upon relentlessly. Because someone said it rightly, you are nothing if not resilient