Resilience is the road
How many times in the last 60 days have you heard someone say the word, “resilience.” When I hear it in a commercial on TV, a podcast I love, even on the radio, I cringe. Yes, I cringe. And, yes, you are right, I do talk about resilience for a living.
Why do I cringe? Because resilience is a term that has lost its meaning. I don’t mean that you can’t find it in Webster’s Dictionary. I mean that resilience is actually a very abstract term that people are using to describe a phenomenon they can’t explain, so, in response, they use it to explain anything around them that is hard to fathom or understand.
I’m not one to let concepts go undefined, especially ones I’ve been researching for almost a decade. So, over the last 60 days, I’ve asked entrepreneurs and business leaders about resilience. What do they know about it? What does it make them think about? How do they experience it?
For the sake of brevity, I’m going to share two of the definitions I’ve noticed most frequently. The first definition describes resilience as a personal awakening, a newfound ability to finally see oneself holistically. No longer is one private or public, feminine or masculine, leader or follower, but all of these things. At once. The global pandemic created a situation in which one was forced to see their own reflection (Exhibit A: Zoom). Resilience was a process of discovery, finding what was there all along. It was beautiful to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders talk about resilience this way.
The second group defined resilience as a type of pseudo-promise land. Resilience was a destination, one that they hadn’t yet arrived and were not sure how to get there. One entrepreneur described it through the imagery of a wayward river, ravaging the land, making its own riverbed. She placed herself on a raft fighting the river, crashing into the rocks on either side. She couldn’t gain control of the raft, or the river. She was being thrown from one side to the next as the river rapids rushed forward to a destination unknown. It was heartbreaking to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders talk about their experience this way.
Is one right and another wrong? No. They are both describing resilience. I can sense your skepticism. How can that be? How can both peace and hardship point to resilience?
The calm and the chaos, the beautiful and the brutal, these are all resilience because resilience is, in fact, not a place, but a journey. Or, as I like to say, resilience is the road, not the destination. A continuous, never-ending, winding, breathtaking, devastating path.
Have I lost you yet? Isn’t this a blog for startups? What does resilience have to do with your business?
Let’s consider the last 60 days. Maybe your business experienced hardship. Maybe it experienced calm. Maybe it had growth. Maybe it was stressful. Maybe you had to furlough, or layoff, or fire staff. Maybe it was the best 60 days your business has ever seen. Maybe it was also the most terrible.
Resilience as the road means that the decisions you made and continue to make—Which way to turn, which mountain to climb, what vehicle to use, should you walk, hike, or bike? What should you carry with you? All of these choices change your experience on the road.
And the decisions you made in your own business, and more importantly, how you came to make that decision, that changed your business. The resulting outcomes had a direct impact in what happened next.
Resilience, at its core, is about decision-making. And those decisions determine the life of your business (aka the distance of the road). In order to make quality “resilient” decisions for your organization, you have to process information effectively so that your decisions are easy to make when you come to a fork in the road or when the path is unclear. And, hey, did you know there are maps you can buy? (call me.)
Seeking a road marker, dear Founder? Write down your answers to the following:
1. How do you define “good” decisions?
2. How do you define “good” decision-making?
This will help you get started.
Dr. Claire Chase is a resilience thinking champion, storyteller, and researcher of human interaction. She is the Founder of Resilience By Design Consulting, where she helps companies utilize resilience thinking, collect customer insights, and build resilient marketing, sales, and company cultures.
Website: www.resiliencebydesign.net ・IG: @resilience.by.design & Linkedin