Taylor Clarke Blog

Resilience for Organisational Change: building capacity for change by Wendy Robinson, Principal Consultant

June 11th, 2010

Over the last year or so at Taylor Clarke, we’ve been developing a new product offering: Resilience for Change.  Given the amount of change we get to see across hundreds of client organisations, we’ve wondered for a long time about how we can help build capacity for change within organisations.  By this we mean – how can we help individuals and teams absorb change;  and to respond to, cope with, and even grow through and learn to thrive during change?

When you think about it, we human beings actually quite enjoy change, and often bring change voluntarily into our lives (think about the promotions and jobs you’ve gone for, the new house you’ve sought, the challenges you’ve sought out in your life in order to stretch yourself and prove to yourself that you can achieve big things!).  We know that lack of control within organisational change can be a hugely debilitating factor.  But what else needs to be accounted for, when organisations are embarking on huge change initiatives?

Our research into resilience at work has enlightened us on this. 

People vary in the extent to which they have the capacity to be resilient.  And, everyone can work on their resilience to increase it.  Our early years have a huge influence on our resilience for later in life: risk factors include the adversities we have faced in early life, low socio-economic status, and marital tensions to name but a few.  Protective factors include our ability to problem solve, our intelligence, and our ability to form friendships and supportive relationships.  The good news is that these protective factors, over which we have control, have more impact on our life course than the risk factors.

Professor Salvatore Maddi conducted a 12 year study of managers and executives at the Illinois Bell Telephone company.  This organisation had formed out of a part of AT&T when the telecommunications industry in the States was deregulated.  This involved seismic changes for the 450 men and women in Maddi’s research subjects.  He discovered that two thirds of his group did not and could not cope with the uncertainties, chaos, confusion, fears for the future; symptoms included negative physical impacts (e.g. increased rates of strokes, heart attacks, increased blood pressure) as well as emotional impacts (e.g. depression, panic attacks, anger tantrums, confusion) and addictions (e.g. alcoholism, drug dependencies).  The other third, however, had the complete opposite reaction.  They remained healthy and happy, their relationships with others at work and at home improved during the change, and they received excellent performance reviews.   In effect, they thrived in the chaos.  Maddi identified what he called ‘Three hardy attitudes’:

o Emotional Commitment to do one’s best (through the change) and to help others as well
o At attitude of Control – a belief that one can influence the change in some way
o Facing up to the Challenge – and learning from it.

These resilient people also showed two key skills: (i) the ability to take a broader perspective and understand the change at a deeper level, and to problem solve in a different, innovative way; and (ii) the ability to engage others around them for support, to work through interpersonal conflicts (as these drain us at work), and to maintain social relationships at work and at home no matter what. 

When we think of people around us who we instinctively see as resilient, we tend to think of people who:

- have come through hardships having learnt something important about themselves, and gained new skills or awareness, which increase the quality of their life from there on in
- can tolerate a huge amount of adversity with equanimity and often good humour!
- seem to ride the waves of constant change – even enjoying the uncertainty, perhaps taking advantage of uncertainty in order to achieve something which hitherto would have been more difficult

Dr Christine Padesky, a prominent cognitive behavioural psychologist, quotes Nancy Davis’s (1999) research which outlines the ‘areas of competence’ of resilience; we particularly like the Emotional competence which includes a sense of humour; and the Moral competence, which talks to the importance of contributing to society, and reaching out to help others even perhaps when we are struggling ourselves.  And finally, the Spiritual – knowing that one’s life matters, having some kind of connection with the rest of humanity – perhaps when we are struggling most with ‘our stuff’.

At Taylor Clarke, we have concluded on a definition of resilience for organisational change:

“The attitudes, skills and strengths, that
enable individuals, and teams to thrive
within organisational change”

We have produced our own model of resilience for change, which is made up of three broad areas:

1. ‘Me’ – my personal resilience characteristics, for example, my self-belief;
2. ‘It’ – the change I’m in, and how I respond to that change, for example, seeing wider perspectives and seeking to find ways round any problems; and
3. ‘Them’ – the importance of others around me when my resilience is being tested, for example, do I have people around me to whom I can turn for support?

And finally, we have developed a toolkit of resources to support individuals, teams, and leaders, in diagnosing resilience capacity, and building on it, in order to support individuals and teams to prepare for, and cope with, organisational change.  Part of the toolkit concerns ‘the decision to take control’ and the resultant actions; this is an interesting aspect of resilience, as this decision point is like the fulcrum on which we turn – do we stay stuck, in helplessness, feeling like a victim, or do we work out how we can have an influence, and act, to improve the situation for ourselves and others? 

We are also interested in how a strengths-based approach can build capacity for change within people and organisations.  As Alex Linley, in his book ‘From Average to A+’ points out, our areas of greatest potential are our areas of strength.  Regardless of what your strengths are (and Alex lists at least 60!), and how they relate to the current organisational change, we believe that harnessing these strengths, and giving them more airplay in your day to day life, will boost your resilience and help you thrive in life.  Indeed, this area of ‘strengths’ is a key component in our model of resilience (falling under the ‘Me’ area). 

In conclusion, we quote CEOs from an Institute of Leadership & Management survey carried out in April 2009*, which explored the personal characteristics these Chief Executives of SMEs most wanted in their middle and senior managers, in a time of recession:-

“Senior managers need drive to keep going in the face of multiple obstacles.  They need to keep picking themselves up, and be able to go over, under, round the obstacles and find any way to make things happen.”

“A willingness to keep going when the natural tendency is to stare like a deer in the headlights.”

“The attitude of being able to cope with whatever life throws at them…resilience to keep going when they get really stumped.”

Surely resilience characteristics……!

Our aim in developing our Resilience product has been to offer practical and relevant workshops, tools, coaching etc which will enable managers at all levels to self-diagnose their resilience, and that of their teams, and to be supported in building that resilience, laying down capability for the future, and the changes yet to be encountered. �
If you would like an informal conversation about resilience for change in your organisation, please contact Wendy Robinson on 0141 221 1707 or wendy@taylorclarke.co.uk.

 *”Delivering in a Downturn: What Does it Take?” published by the Institute of Leadership & Development, April 2009

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