Today's environment is characterized by rapid change, consistent danger of disruption, and growing security as well as environmental concerns. Operating in such unparalleled uncertainty keeps organizational resilience a hot topic.
As "stronger, better, faster" is often not enough to guarantee a company's survival, we decided to dedicate an LC GLOBAL® CHANGE TALK to the topic: Organizational Change Capability and Resilience. We had the pleasure to welcome Dr. Marie Sonnet who shared her research and a review of the latest findings with our audience. Dr. Sonnet is the co-editor of the Fielding Monograph on Resilience and a fellow of the Social Institute for Innovation (FGU).
The insightful 60-minute video conversation highlighted organizational resilience and change readiness as a cognitive, contextual, and behavior skill set. In other words, resilience is a mindset that values the existing expertise while consistently probing into new lines of thinking as well. As Dr. Sonnet explained, many of resilience capabilities depend on paradoxes that open the mind to expand our thinking. To name an example: If we want to expand our horizons, to build a greater change readiness, leaders have to learn to be decisive despite uncertainty.
Behavioral aspects might include storytelling as a strength-based team building effort. Showcasing past successes of a team through positive storytelling can help to keep all team members in a "can do" spirit. Such a spirit is necessary and helpful for overcoming adversity and obstacles on the way to success.
To guide your team toward positive storytelling as a resilience-building measure, Dr. Sonnet provided the following questions, which can also be found on her website:
Assess yourself - To what extent do we:
1. Tell stories about times we solved problems together?
