Why focusing on “recovery” keeps us from achieving true resilience

Recovery and Resilience are terms frequently used in diverse arenas, including psychology, clinical behavioral health, IT disaster recovery, business continuity, emergency management, and disaster relief services. These terms are often treated as though they mean the same thing, and I’ve long been uncomfortable with this interchangeable use. I believe that this conflation leads us to overemphasize recovery and a return to “the way things were,” rather than to look to the future, to anticipate and grow into what lies ahead of us.

In the Oxford dictionary, recovery is defined as “a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.” Resilience is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” In recovery, we return. In resilience, we recover. But aren’t we missing something by focusing only on where we used to be, where we are coming from, or how to get back to that place?

What happens once we once we experience a disruption? Survival will certainly require some level of recovery. Certainly, we have to be able to return to basic functioning. This may encompass the ‘messy middle’ we think of in terms of continuity of business, operations, and government. Given the Oxford definition of resilience, we might think that recovery is the end goal. But is recovery to the “old normal” actually a place where individuals and organizations will thrive?

Writer Bruce Feiler points out that frequent disruptions result in frequent periods of transition. The more we can master these “monster curveballs,: as he calls them, the more resilient we will become. It should go without saying that following a disaster, there is no going back the way things used to be. The “old normal” and the “new normal” will never be identical. It may give us great comfort to think that we can get to the place where we once were, but we can experience tremendous growth and adaptive change when we make the choice to embrace what lies ahead.

Unfortunately, This continued focus on recovery to the “old normal” continues to plague efforts. For example, government disaster recovery funds are often restricted to rebuilding to the previous standards rather than for the mitigation against future disasters. IT disaster recovery focuses on a return to previous levels of functionality, which may be necessary in the short-term, but may still leave vulnerabilities unmitigated. Recovery is certainly necessary as an interim goal, but we needn’t stop there. Resilience isn’t maintenance and it certainly isn’t a return to the same vulnerable state we were in before. I believe we need to take our understanding of resilience far beyond mere recovery.

Indeed, when examining organizational resilience, the British Standard Institute (BSI) builds on the usual definition of resilience: “The ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.” This definition brings with it a hidden caveat: in order to anticipate the disruptions that may lie ahead, we have to first accept the the reality that serious disruptions are inevitable. In order to prepare proactive plans, we first have to accept that uncertainly is baked into our collective futures, and then we can go on to engage in preparedness activities to ready ourselves — and our organizations — for those inevitable disruptions.

What is it that we hope to achieve? I would posit that we all want to seize the opportunities inherent in these transitions, in the same way that we have begun to think about risks as laden with possibility. We first identify a potential risk (the probability of something happening), and then we experience a disruption (whether or not we identified it as a risk), and then we experience a transition as a result of that disruption. Like it or not, we’ll never be the same. Seizing opportunities requires being willing to enter a new frontier, to step onto the invisible bridge, to strive for a new normal where we will thrive. Before the disruption even occurs, we have to examine the assumptions all of our current plans, platforms, and programs are resting on, and if we can, begin to identify what might lie ahead if any of those assumptions are shaken or dismantled.

The focus on “recovery” makes us blind to the actions we must take in order to achieve true resilience. You could argue that resilience is the wrong word to use, given the limitations of its sometimes-definition, but I believe that resilience is imbued with holistic vision and promise: We want to see individuals, families, communities, and organizations thrive. Becoming resilient implies a holistic effort — a marrying of all risk, strategy, and even wellness activity such that we can look to the future in a clear-eyed, curious way, and build the structures we need to carry us forward. The good news is that there are some immediate steps that we can take to build a more resilient future:

• Accept the inevitability of frequent and severe disruptions: Each time we emerge from a crisis or disruption, we tend to put the experience behind us and rapidly forget the lessons we have learned. Unless we have sustained serious losses, humans are typically loathe to implement solutions to challenges we have successfully survived. This bias means we see something as a “close call” but not a legitimate threat. If survival isn’t the only goal (and it shouldn’t be), we need to consider how we might master and perhaps even benefit from disruptions that will occur. This shift in mindset requires us to assume that disruptions will occur with a rapidity, a ferocity, and a scale that we have never before seen. When we begin to truly accept the reality as part of our individual and organizational strategies, we can finally begin to prioritize becoming far more robust than we were yesterday.
• Redefine Resilience: Recovery is only one stop along the way. It may return you to a place of being able to maintain the status quo, but you need to do more than that if you want to achieve a “new normal” where you will thrive. Resilience implies robustness, even antifragility, defined by Nassim Taleb, which includes the possibility that we can actually benefit from shocks and disruptions. Most of us only focus on what we have today and how to make incremental steps forward. The key to a resilient future is to redefine what it will take for you to get to a frontier of growth, change, and insight. Start by creating your own definition of resilience, and by all means, don’t stop at merely recovering.
• Engage in future-forward strategy: Learning from bold futurists such as Peter Schwartz, who wrote the now classic Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, has dwindled in recent decades. In early March, I spoke to the director of an academic center for scenario planning, which is rooted in futurist methodologies, and he opined with dismay that the large consulting firms are only creating hollow versions of what constitutes true scenario planning, that companies no longer employ well-supported scenario planners, and that academic centers have done little to foster the growth of this important aspect of organizational strategy. He even referred to the use of predictable trajectory models, often termed “scenarios,” as an abuse of the term. But let’s ask the core question here: how can you anticipate disruption and create proactive plans and preparations if you invest so little in the development of key, future-focused strategic insights? The implications are vast. Many companies emphasize their use of so-called “data-driven insights,” but even this is not sufficient. Anticipating future scenarios that could upend our current models does not equate to identifying today’s trends. Many analysts look only to what is evident rather than how current models could collapse and what it would mean to us if they do. What if more companies had anticipated the mobile smart phone a decade before it emerged on the scene? The fall of the Soviet Union? Or Brexit? The rise of malignant populism and autocratic rule in democratic nations? The collapse of the Euro and what that means for business? Oh wait, that one hasn’t occurred (yet?). It is impossible to accurately predict the future, but first we can identify the types of impacts that would upend our own assumptions, and then adjust our individual and organizational models accordingly. We need to challenge our mental models if we want to thrive. To do that requires concerted effort.
• Leadership must invest in fostering a resilient future: Like all management, recovery, and strategic activity, if a committed effort to develop future-forward insights is not fully supported by executive management or government leadership, if it is lost in the weeds or side-lined in favor of election cycles, quarterly profit, or short-term growth, the effort will flounder. Once again, a focus on recovery limits us to preparing for immediate loss and getting back to the status quo. Shifting to an emphasis on resilience can take us into another space entirely. To go beyond a recovery mindset requires strong leadership and a commitment to an investment of resources and time. Much like the golden days of Bell Laboratories, organizations would do well to employ a team of people who can help navigate into the future so that we are all more ready for it when it arrives. Bell had a monopoly on telecommunications in the U.S., which perhaps explains why they were able to justify employing bench scientists to conduct decades of basic research. Ma Bell trusted that a long-term commitment to basic research would pay off, and they were right. Increasingly, companies and governments only focus on short-term gains, and we are left with a decline in invention. When you neglect such long-term investment, you are stuck with only innovating with what you have already in your hands. Innovation may carry you forward for a while, but will it be a game changer in the long-run? Will it take you to the uncharted new frontier? Unfortunately, as an indicator of trends in investment for the future, government funding in research and development has been steadily declining for decades. The business sector has picked up some of the slack, but usually under pressure for short-term results and only for as long as shareholders will tolerate it. Planning for the future requires effort, imagination, and most of all, time. If those investments are made, we may just be able to build the systems and structures that will make us more resilient across all fronts, regardless of what the future may hold.
• Governance models need to emphasize the long-term. We have a global problem. As humans, we have a notoriously difficult time thinking about ourselves in the future and what we may experience at that time, let alone what future generations may face. As a result, very few governments, companies, or individuals are committed to the long-term and what it may look like. Part of the problem is that few have enough skin in the game to care about what happens in 20 years. Whether this relates to our own human brains, the rapidity of the election cycle, the sluggishness of democratic decision-making, the separation of policy-makers from the people whom policy impacts, or the emphasis on short-term gains for stock holders, we can see that this is a global problem. However, a shift in emphasis to the long-term is likely the only way we can address problems that now affect us on a global scale, and it is the only way we can create governance models that will rid us of the moral hazards that plague current systems. This will require a seismic shift in how we function as government, as institutions, and as organizations, but it is a shift we have to make.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this important part of our collective journey towards increased resilience — for individuals and organizations — and I welcome comments and ideas. What do you think resilience means? What do you think it takes to achieve it?