If your experience in the corporate world has been anything like most employees and managers with whom I speak, you likely work hard with amazing people and yet, at times, still find the organisation for which you work coming up short on success factors. Either the budget has blown out, the scope has changed, it is taking much longer than originally forecast to deliver, or you have the unmitigated joy of all these things happening at once.
The upside is the Bard had it right when he put into the mouth of Cassius:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
This is a good thing because volatility is a feature rather than a bug in modern organisations. Yet, most employees and managers with whom I speak think their organisation is not adaptable enough to respond to daily shocks or future calamities. This is a major risk in an often volatile world.
Covid, for all its tribulations, did force the hand of many senior leaders on one thing: the need to be able to respond quickly to a changing environment. While pace of change is not new, it invariably comes industry by industry or, as with the Digital Revolution, takes decades to ripple through organisations. Covid, by contrast, necessitated change within weeks, and this proved a supreme test of operational resilience. Add to this mix that an organisation is nothing without its people, and it underscores why to talk about organisational resilience brings with it Mental Health As A Strategic Issue.
To successfully navigate volatile environments, organisations need to adopt a process mindset that creates a culture of psychological safety, breeds team cohesion, promotes adaptable leadership, and emphasises agility. All while apprehending the important distinction between having an agile strategy and making it up as you go. Oh, and I nearly forgot—all of this has to happen while Leading At Scale.
