Business Resilience through change management – some quick thoughts

Business resilience can complement change management initiatives and programs. So what does business resilience have to offer the organisation that wants or needs to change?

 

 Business resilience is focused on business success (or at least it should be). As an organisation goes through a change program and refocuses on core business (for example), there is an opportunity to partner with the business leaders and other staff to identify changes to business processes, values and behaviours that lend themselves to adaptive capacity, flexibility and agility in the face of turbulence.

Some questions to think about when coupling change management with business resilience may be:

·       What is the key outcome of change and how can I ensure business resilience is tailored to meet this outcome?

·       Is there an opportunity to influence workforce values by including ‘flexibility’, ‘adaptability’, ‘resilient’ or ‘innovative’ along-side other core values in the business plan?

·       Can efficient business resilience investment enable a leaner, outcome focused organisation which can manage risks and deliver business success?

·       Are we more agile and can we change direction faster as a result of streamlined processes and structures - if not what do we need to do so we achieve this?

These questions, and others like them should be explored at the scoping stage of the change management initiative. It is then up to you to adapt your own thinking and approach to meet organisational needs through resilience. Business resilience should not just be about sudden shocks such as natural disasters and economic crisis. It is also not only about emergency response or business continuity. Organisational resilience must rise to the challenge by providing and creating value through change management and become part of business strategy.