Etymology : Resilience

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.” ― Elizabeth Edwards

"BCSS gloucester branch auction - The national agave collection" Stephen Boisvert. This image has been altered from its original state. CC BY-SA 2.0

WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY WE ASPIRE TO CREATE RESILIENCE?

esilience is a concept gaining prominence in many different fields, perhaps most notable for our discussion, in organizations seeking to find ways to weather the storms of inevitable change and secure the relationships they’ve so carefully built with those who support their cause. You will hear the word resilience from the Heurista Institute a great deal. It is one of the cornerstones of our thinking -- how do the projects we convene help to create greater resilience in organizations?

Resilience as a concept differs from the equally popular word being bandied about quite a bit of late; sustainability (from the root to sustain). Sustainability has at its heart the desire to maintain, even if it’s maintaining a rate of growth or change. The work of the Institute is drawn more dynamically to the concept of resilience in that it implies permeability (from the root permeable) – if we are resilient, we are at heart in a perpetual and permeable state of learning. We can not only withstand the stress inevitable in the changes and opportunities before us, but we can break apart and re-form and recover while absorbing new information and furthering our horizons in the landscape of information and practice. We can test theories, be vulnerable, be wrong. This allows not only for the growth of our practice and our mission but of growth in the face of new voices, new information, alternative ideas, different ways of understanding. We absorb our learnings into our current state and are more often than not transformed positively by the stress of learning new ways of finding meaning in our work and our relationships. Resilience is a habit of thinking and acting that allow things around us to change and for us to change and grow in response. It will be the key to long-term success for many organizations. Trying to sustain just postpones the inevitable, whereas learning and absorbing the changing landscape allows for a transcendence style of business that is really more about becoming.

One of my favorite commentaries on this type of becoming through designing organizations for resilience is found in a TED talk that social theorist Clay Shirky did a few years ago titled Institutions vs. Collaboration. His example of the waning days of institutions like IBM or Microsoft who want to control and “sustain” their place in the market hierarchy and the rising of resilient sustainable platforms like Wikipedia which are permeable and resilient by design. They change with the market and the needs, input and culture of their users. They recover and reinvent by design. It’s a powerful idea of how to move organizations with relationships at the core of their missions forward. Humans are complicated and changeable and iterative in their behavior, and this potential for changeability shows up in their relationships with the organizations they partner with. Resilience allows us to accomplish our work while maintaining a constant state of learning, of becoming.

With gratitude,

Patricia