CROSSFIRE
Resilience: Bouncing
Back Post Pandemic
By Herman Githinji
Our world changes so quickly these
days. The training and education
you receive in school might help
you attain the skills required to actually do
your job, but there is more to success than
that. These days, it’s soft skills that set you
apart from the pack.
When everything around you is uncertain
and changing quick, two traits most
important are resilience and sustainability.
Resilience may not be discussed quite
as much as sustenance, but it’s equally
important. When you appreciate the
impact that resilience could have on
your life and your business, it becomes a
priority.
There is not a single person who is
handed victories a hundred percent of
the time. It is difficult to fully commit to
long-term goals and expect that we will
always achieve success. Some of the most
successful people in the world are the ones
who have failed the most.
For a decade now, businesses have
emphasized how successes and gains can
be replicated in the long term. While they
chased sustainability, they forgot to think
and plan for setbacks and adversities. We
manage companies to overcome risks but
not to bounce back after a mega calamity.
Resilience is all about how well you’re able
to adjust to changes in the world around
you. Resilience is our ability to bounce
back after we have struggled, faltered, or
failed. It is being able to pick ourselves
up, dust ourselves off, take a moment or
two to re-collect ourselves, and then get
back to the business of pursuing our goal.
It involves lots of optimism. Resilience
isn’t removing the adversity, but it allows
you to take it on the chin, and be able to
bounce back with greater ease.
We cannot have effective sustainability
without considering resilience. Resilience
has two facets to it; the ability to hang
on during difficult times, and the ability
to spring back after a rough patch. I am
worried that some businesses that were
very successful before the Covid-19
pandemic may find it really hard to survive
the current lockdowns and afterward, to
quickly come back to their pre-Covid
performance levels.
Bad things will happen. Covid happens.
But social insects may provide some
inspiration. According to Eliza Middleton
in her article, “What Social insects can
teach us about resilient infrastructure,”
accidents, natural disasters, and random
or targeted attacks can cripple human
infrastructure. Our transportation
There is not a single person who is handed
victories a hundred percent of the time. It is
difficult to fully commit to long-term goals
and expect that we will always achieve success.
Some of the most successful people in
the world are the ones who have failed the
most
networks, supply chains, and
communication networks are increasing
in size and becoming more complex as
our populations grow. How do we protect
those networks from becoming vulnerable
and failing?
Social insects, such as ants, bees, and
wasps, live in a common nest site. They
work together to raise nest mates, they
have one (or a few) “queens”, they have
fertile females (the queens) that produce
all of the nest mates, and they have
overlapping generations, with young and
old individuals living together.
The individual within a nest behaves a
bit like a neuron in a brain. They interact
and react to the behavior of the closest
neighbors living within the nest. This
social behavior can lead to impressive
feats, such as termites building large
mounds or ants working together to
form bridges or rafts. It also provides the
nest with a certain amount of resilience
when faced with disruptions. By working
together, these small insects are able to fix
a small failure before it becomes a large
failure.
Three factors that lead to social insect
resilience are decentralized control,
redundancy, and job-switching behavior.
In insect societies, there is no leader and
no blueprint. This decentralized control
means every individual is essentially
replaceable, allowing colonies to be
resistant to the loss of individuals. Also,
damage to the system - the colony - can be
dealt with as it happens, without the need
for time-consuming communications
with managers.
There is no secret recipe to becoming
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