A process alone is not enough to achieve resilience . Success in achieving a resilient organization follows the same principles as success in establishing an organization that values safety or security . It requires true leadership and commitment at the board and executive level . True leadership means decisions to support resilience are reflected in budgets and the organizational culture . Such a culture allows employees to raise issues regarding resilience and safety without repercussions , supports communication and a willingness to allow anyone to make the hard tradeoffs ( e . g . stop the production line , sacrificing production for safety ).
To achieve resilience an organization needs certain competencies 32 :
• Information Management – ability to handle the large amount of data associated with an escalating situation and the ability to determine what is important .
• Communication and Coordination – the ability for people know each other ’ s roles and tasks and communicate clearly .
• Decision Making – the ability to make timely and appropriate decisions . Consensus won ’ t work since it is too slow . Top down directives won ’ t work either since the workload would be too high to manage from the top . Thus decision making needs to be distributed and delegated ( just as in the military in the ‘ fog of war ’, local decisions are made aligned with the overall objective ).
• Effect Control – the ability to monitor and update the process .
Every phase in the resilience lifecycle is important to the overall resilience outcome and depends on actions an organization takes . The first lifecycle planning phase requires architecting , designing and building systems that are resilient .
The primary aspect of anticipation is to understand potential losses , whether they be of life or injury , financial , reputation , damage to the environment , or mission . Once these potential losses are understood it makes sense to review the hazards that could lead to these losses and the scenarios where such losses could occur . For example , loss of life or injury near a chemical plant could occur from the hazard of an accidental release of chemicals , in the context of a scenario where the wind blew them in the direction of people ( this might not always be the case ). Once these scenarios are understood with an understanding of the system and unsafe actions it is possible to produce requirements and an implementation .
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John Bergström et al ., “ Training Organisational Resilience in Escalating Situations ,” in Resilience Engineering in Practice : A Guidebook .
Journal of Innovation 29