In the instantaneous and fast-paced world we live in, your customers hold you to a very high standard. Your company may have earned this reputation through impeccable customer service, great products, or an amazing experience, but even when unforeseeable adversities or disasters occur, these standards do not falter in the eye of the consumer. While they may sympathize when your company’s in the midst of a hurricane, they still expect the full and timely delivery of their product, service or experience. If you cannot provide them with what they need, right when they need it, they will find another company that will.
So what steps has your company taken to be adaptive, agile and resilient? These characteristics aren’t just reactive measures to a sudden situation, although that’s typically when they are most easily visible. These traits are results of proactive education, training and practice.
A Wall Street Journal article titled “Corporate Resilience Comes from Planning, Flexibility, and the Creative Management of Risk” which features Accenture, asks “How do you ensure that your company can bounce back quickly from disruptions, big or small? It’s impossible to plan for every type of problem. Instead, ‘you have to build in resilience,’ says Yossi Sheffi, director of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s Center for Transportation and Logistics in Cambridge, Mass., and author of ‘The Resilient Enterprise.;” Sheffi says “The principles that build a generally resilient enterprise will help you no matter what will hit you.”
Creating plans and acquiring proper training to act with resiliency and agility is necessary to thrive. Even though being resilient is a great skill to have at all times, it’s especially imperative in times of chaos. But waiting until a cataclysmic event is not the time to pursue resiliency training. You must have proactive measures established to practice prior to any real catastrophe.
According to the article, “‘Most companies haven’t really thought through developing a global operations strategy and operating model for resilience in an ever-changing supply/demand network. Based on Accenture’s extensive research and client work, fewer than 12% of multinational companies surveyed have developed a long-term strategy for adaptively managing their supply chains from source of supply through to the end consumers,’ says Pat Byrne, global managing partner for supply chain management at Accenture.”
Catherine Bolgar, author of the article, writes “Unfortunately, being resilient has never been harder. Globalization, lean manufacturing and ever-shorter product cycles take out any cushion that protected companies in the past.” Now it’s not only the plans and implementation strategies that need to be setup for resiliency and adaptiveness, the people must be resilient and adaptive as well.
Research shows that highly resilient people respond to challenges with flexibility, bounce back from challenges, and even find opportunities within workplace challenges. Importantly, they perform more effectively in their jobs, are healthier, more engaged with their work, and have higher commitment to their organizations.
