Resilience
RESILIENCE is one of the few ideas I can hold tight to right now, which means it’s something that needs attention and nurturing. So let’s keep pulling the thread on what it means for us – as individual humans, as organizations, and as a community – for this moment we are in.
But first let me be clear about what I do not mean by resilience: hustling more, ignoring our feelings and fears and just pushing through, or virtually anything that is not on the side of liberation.
What I do mean is essentially this: Let’s think about what adaptation needs to look like now, knowing what we know, but also what we can't yet know.
What kind of future do we want to build?
I see a need for us to think way more expansively and creatively about what organizational and business resilience means. How organizational resilience feeds into individual resilience and also into community resilience. And honestly how they all feed each other.
What does building for resilience look like at a time that is so destabilizing to nearly everything we’ve counted on?
What if we were to surrender to the idea that there is no longer a status quo available to us? Does that feel freeing? Scary? Both?
What if rather than focus on what once was, we focus on what makes sense to build right now, instability and all? If we imagined starting from a blank slate, what would we make?
How do we resist and defy the current state so that we can persist through and beyond it?
I just don’t believe resilience will come from hunkering down and holding tight to what once was – waiting for things to get back to some better, more “normal” place. Or worse yet, capitulating to illegal, anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes. We’re seeing too much of that already.
As one thought experiment: Look what we’ve experienced in the last five years alone. Do you think it makes sense to do a 5-year strategic plan? Or even a 3-year one? Or should we be focusing more on creating nimble, flexible organizations that are resilient enough to respond to and adapt to what is happening now and whatever might come next?
Goal setting and planning, sure.
But mostly – shoring up our clarity, our vision, our purpose, and our convictions. Looking ahead to what a different kind of economy might look like. Doubling down on what we believe in (because what else have we got?). Making sure we're being good stewards of the resources we have, while sharing what we can with those who are in need.
Even though resilience feels like the theme for right now, part of me hates it, because it sounds HARD. Ease is probably not in the cards. Typical thinking and planning are not in the cards. But – we can make sure that joy is in the cards. That purpose is in the cards. That fulfillment is in the cards. And hopefully, that resilience is in the cards.
We just can’t be afraid to start thinking and acting differently.