Resilience, Agility, and Adaptability

I’ve read several articles over the last week that point to a common organizational mantra: focus on resilience, agility, and adaptability. That is great advice, given the dynamic and uncertain nature of our current environmental context. Layer on top of this general focus a sense of urgency.

We hear all the time “adapt or die,” “fail fast,” and “time is money.”

Change. Change fast. Change smartly.

That’s a lot to do. With limited resources, the question becomes how fast and to what extent? Perhaps the answer is as simple as adapting faster than others in your space. Perhaps the answer is to adapt sufficiently to overcome any risks that might disrupt or destroy your business. Perhaps the answer is something very specific and unique to your situation.

So, how do you arrive at an answer? How do you identify actions that will help your organization remain resilient? What if the best path forward is not obvious or bumps hard against traditional wisdom?

One option is to identify weak signals or harbingers of what is on the long-range horizon that might provide direction on where you need to go. As the best path emerges, it might still be squishy and inexact, but you at least have a sense of a possible way forward.

Let’s drill down a little further to set out a series of possible steps to take.

• Scan the environment by reading articles or listening to podcasts from many different sources.

• Think critically about what you see and hear.

• Gather together constituents to have generative discussions on key topics. Don’t seek to come up with answers. Rather, be imaginative and explore opportunities AND assess potential risks.

• Get smarter about things that are new to you. Take a deep dive into unfamiliar topics.

• Be proactive and do something with all this new information. Integrate it into ongoing decision cycles. Think about staffing, budgeting, training, and more.

• Allocate resources to achieve the changes you’d like to see happen.

• Create a feedback loop to get new information.

• Start over with another round of scanning.

If you found this short summary interesting, here are a few resources that can take you further.

A system for scanning and monitoring. By Andy Hines.

Bringing True Strategic Foresight Back to Business by Amy Webb

How to Succeed in an Era of Volatility by Dunigan O’Keeffe, Karen Harris, and Austin Kimsom

How you can enhance your strategic planning with Futures Thinking by Chris Drury