Resilience, Collaboration, Interconnection
These are the capacities every organization needs to navigate adversity in an uncertain, complex world
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed that an uncertain, complex environment, replete with challenges and adverse situations, is the common denominator of today’s and tomorrow’s world. This type of environment causes fear and anxiety, making not only individuals vulnerable, but also organizations, communities, and government systems. This is why it is vital to have clarity regarding the capacities which strengthen us and that we can leverage to minimize our vulnerability, enabling us to detect opportunities, achieve our objectives and reset our course.
As organizations, this health contingency period reminds us of the need to develop and strengthen our resilience, have a clear, simple course to communicate to all our audiences and impact groups, be more agile and flexible in designing and adopting new strategies, participate actively in collaboration networks, be interconnected in a system in which public and private institutions collaborate with a single purpose: the common good and sustainability of our societies.
In this uncertain, complex environment, EGADE Business School has raised awareness in society, and the business sector in particular, with the recent publication of the Decalogue for the Economic-Business Refounding of Mexico, which highlights the need for mechanisms to recover rapidly from eventualities, redefine our course, and accelerate decision making in every sphere. This will be possible if we act with agility and effectiveness in the development and attainment of the following capacities:
- Resilience in individuals and organizations, being open to embracing change, anticipating the future, seizing opportunities, and even flourishing and reinventing themselves in unforeseen circumstances. In order to do so, they need to be capable of accepting and learning from mistakes, trying as many times as necessary to achieve the proposed objective. Flexibility to adapt to change, optimism to see the positive side of things, and initiative to make things happen are key attitudes for facing adversity without fear.
- Agile, flexible organizations that, even when they have a defined strategy in place, are capable of modifying it when opportunities have been identified and more than one future scenario projected. Organizations of the future must have the capacity to design environments that foster creation, in which it is safe to make mistakes, and accelerate their planning cycles to reassign and reconfigure resources more frequently. With this approach, leaders build multifunctional teams around the uncertainty in order to reduce risk and empower teams, rather than directing them, with clear, specific objectives.
- Active business collaboration networks that align their interests in the attainment of a common good, in favor of society and its sustainability. Associations, chambers of commerce, strategic alliances are networks whose functioning, and the diversity of their connections, make it possible to trigger initiatives aligned with current and, why not, future social needs. Every member of these networks has distinctive resources and capacities, enabling them, through specific actions, to generate and add value to the proposed initiatives.
- Interconnected public-private sector systems. Just as companies are capable of managing multifunctional teams, the public and private sectors should capitalize on their strengths to improve their value offering to society. A clear example of this is the collaboration, organization and joint efforts achieved by public and private hospitals in Monterrey to deal with patients from the region efficiently during this pandemic. The ultimate aim is to achieve a better society in every setting: how can we empower and join the forces of each and every actor?
Therefore, the actions implemented in the short term should focus on developing or strengthening resilience to face adversities, mitigate vulnerability and adapt our activities to accomplish our individual goal and that of the organization in which we participate; designing initiatives that offer the opportunity to consolidate business networks; and fostering the creation of collaboration systems between the public and private sectors. Resilience, collaboration and interconnection, beyond words, are the capacities that will help us navigate adversities in an uncertain, complex world.
Article originally published in Forbes.
