Introduction

Resilience is the ability to effectively respond to unexpected setbacks, and continue functioning.

From my work in SRE, and from all the reading I’ve done to get better at my job, I’ve learned a lot from David Woods. In his amazing book, Resilience Engineering, he talks about the maturation of a new approach to safety management, where we’ve moved from Reactive to Proactive Safety. The book explores different facets of resilence as the ability of systems to anticipate and adapt to the potential for surprise and failure.

The focus in prior years was on establishing a safe system, and then procedures for the human operators to follow to maintain the safety of that system. A lot of research in recent years taught us that failures represented breakdowns in adaptations for coping with complexity and that success was usually obtained as people learned and adapted to create safety in a world full of hazards, trade-offs and multiple goals.

Reslience as we know it now, is focussed on safety management on helping people cope with complexity under pressure to achieve success. A resilient organization treats safety as a core value, not a commodity that can be counted. Safety itself shows only by the events that do not happen. Instead of viewing the absence of incidents as a success and winding down resilience efforts, successful organizations continue to invest in anticipating the changing potential for failure because they understand their knowledge of the gaps is incomplete and that their environment constantly changes.

One measure of reslience is the ability to create foresight - to anticipate the changing shape of risk, before failure and harm occurs.

How do we apply Resilience thinking to organizations?

Weick (1993) did a study of the Mann Gulch fire disaster and in his study identified four sources of resilience:

  1. improvisation and bricolage,
  2. virtual role systems,
  3. an attitude of wisdow and
  4. respectful interaction. Weick argues that these principles facilitate collective sensemaking and thus, help avoid dramatic consequences from unexpected events. A lot of research in following years was based on Weick’s model.

Stephanie Duchek in 2019, published ‘Organizational Resilience: a capability based conceptualization’, that builds on Weick’s model. Stephanie suggests three stages to building resilience:

  1. Anticipation,
  2. Coping,
  3. Adaptation.

These stages have their own unique underlying capabilities that together form Organizational Resilience. I’m going to document my learning from this paper, as I read through it in detail. I hope you find this useful.

Capabilities tied to Organizational Resilience

The underlying capabilities tied to Organizational Resilience can be categorized as below,

  1. Anticipation capabilities
    • Observation and identification
    • Preparation
  2. Coping capabilities
    • Accepting
    • Developing and implementing solutions
  3. Adaptation capabilities
    • Reflection and learning
    • Organizational change

Anticipation is the ability to detect critical developments within the firm or in its environment and to adapt proactively. This does not mean every crisis or failure can be prevented, rather it means that some organizations are able to see the unexpected faster and are able to react to it immediately. Organizations must be able to recognize early signals of crisis to respond quickly, and through that response, avoid escalation. These capabilities look different for diferent firms, in different industries but having them in place helps firms see and react to change before their full impact becomes visible. Preparation includes failure prevention, building and testing recovery plans, business continuity management etc. Training and fire drills can help too. The biggest benefit of these exercises is the growing of effective relationships and mutual understanding among those involved in the plan preparation process. They expand general knowledge and technical skills, and general command over resources that can then be called in, on times of emergency.

Coping refers to an effective handling of unexpeced events as to resist destruction. Accepting reality, accepting that a failure has happened is the first step, that allows folks to then focus on responding to it. The quicker an organization accepts there is a problem, the quicker the response can begin. The more time an organization spends in denial, the longer the problem persists and potentially worsens. When a crisis comes knocking organizations should quickly put their crisis plans into action and develop ad hoc solutions as needed. You need to make sense of what is happening, then you say here’s what we can do to address it, and then you execute.

Adaptation refers to the ability to adopt to critical situations, and to change as needed. This is a type of long term learning that helps organizations avoid or reduce negative consequences from unexpected events. Organizations must be able to reflect on the crisis, events leading up to it, our response to it and incorporate the gained insight into the existing knowledge base. They must be able to act on this knowledge and produce change. Reflection is the process of stepping back from an experience to ponder, carefully and persistently, its meaning to the self through the development of inferences; learning is the creation of meaning from past or current events that serves as a guide for future behavior - Daudelin, 1997.

As you might have guessed already, these stages (Anticipation, Coping and Adaption) are not seperate or linear phases but are quite overlapping, and dependent on each other. Anticipation and Coping are closely tied. You need to detect things quickly, so you can act on them. And you need to act on them well. When you don’t cope well, you might fail and that gives you the opportunity to learn from that failure. Likewise, if you cope successfully, you have an opportunity to learn from success, and recognize what works. Without learning, you will not know what to look for, or how to respond correctly.

Summary

In summary, organizational resilience is not a static trait but a dynamic capability built through continuous learning, preparation, and adaptation. By cultivating anticipation, coping, and adaptation capabilities, organizations can better navigate complexity, uncertainty, and crisis. Resilience thinking shifts the focus from preventing failure to building the capacity to respond effectively and learn from both success and setbacks. It emphasizes that safety and stability emerge from people’s ability to sense, act, and evolve in the face of change—making resilience an essential part of modern organizational strategy.

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