Noel Allnutt, CEO of cyber security specialist, Sekuro, outlines the danger in striving for stability instead of resilience where resilience is not about having every option at your disposal to fight off threats. – but choosing the right ones and using them correctly.
In the current economic climate, businesses around the world are scrambling to maintain stability – a stable workforce, stable revenue, stable costs, the list goes on.
However, is stability what they should be striving for?
There is a danger in striving for stability instead of resilience. When businesses are focused on stability, it will only work as long as external factors stay constant. Stability is about maintaining or reducing variation, it’s about creating predictability.
But when change is inevitable and we’re operating in an environment that’s not static, that’s when we need resilience.
According to ecologist C.S. Holling: “A system can be very resilient and still fluctuate greatly, i.e. have low stability.”
What this means is that if an organisation has resilience, it can withstand instability.
And yet, when it comes to our workforce, the 2023 National Resilience Index, created by Driven, found 91.4% of Australian participants are below the protected level of resilience, which once reached, is said to provide a 5-fold increased protection against mental illness like depression and anxiety.
Organisations need to be ready for the good, the bad and the ugly. So how do we build resilience in our workforce and organisations to ensure we can weather the micro and macro-level instability that’s expected to continue into 2024?
Be an infinite player
Popularised by Simon Sinek, the idea is that in life and business, you can either play a finite or infinite game. Finite games are like football. You have a set amount of players, with fixed rules and an agreed-upon objective – to score more points than your opponent.
On the other hand, in an infinite game, you don’t know who all the players are or when they’re going to enter the game. There are no set rules and the only objective is to keep playing, meaning there are no winners or losers either, only those who drop out.
Where finite players play to win, infinite players play to survive. Surviving requires resilience to fight unexpected new players and maintain relevance. It also encourages innovation. In this scenario, finding stability is not going to help you in the future, because there are so many unknown factors you can’t control.
Innovate at the speed of relevance
Taking advice from NASA – we don’t need to create a new EV car or spaceship to be relevant. Building resilience requires a pragmatic approach to addressing the challenges facing organisations today.
In a B2B market where value is prioritised, we shouldn’t be selling (or buying) products and services just because they are the next shiny thing. A lot of the time a particular tool might seem like a silver bullet, but unless you have the resources and expertise to implement it correctly, it’s a waste of time and will only lead to more pain.
Resilience is not about having every option under the sun at your disposal to fight off threats. It’s about choosing the right ones and using them correctly.
Create meaningful work
As I mentioned earlier, resilience amongst the Australian population is weakening. We need to find ways to build resilience in our people so that we can also build resilience throughout the economy.
If our staff are delivering meaningful work, then our customers will reap the benefits. If we think back to the days of apprenticeships, it was about taking the time to share skills, integrate people into the organisation and helping them find their purpose so they can thrive in their environment. That then translated into the next generation receiving the same journey.
To conclude, we shouldn’t be scrambling for a life raft in an effort to restore stability. Organisations that focus on building resilience across their people, processes and technologies are ultimately going to have a higher chance of succeeding whether the market crashes or spikes. Trying to get things back to where they were pre-pandemic is not a sound strategy, but being prepared for the next seismic shift in our society is.
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