Building resilient organisations

The other day, my six year old daughter asked me, “What do you do again, Mummy?” After I persuaded her that I don’t eat cake all day (always on the hunt for a cake tester job, though), I explained that, as an organisational coach and facilitator, I help people work more closely as a team so that everyone has a say in big decisions that their company is making and more people get a chance to practise making these decisions. Sometimes, that’s not how things have been done in the past so companies and people have to change. 

And then she asked me an incredibly powerful question, 

“But do companies really want to change?”

This got me thinking. 

Why should organisations be motivated to become more collaborative places of work? Why should diverse voices be included in decision-making and why do we want to create places of work where more people can practise their strategic decision-making skills?

Because this is how we can build more resilient organisations together. 

1. Impact

Widening the table - ensuring both diverse representation and equitable discussion spaces - necessarily widens the group’s perspective. New ideas and options become available that can deepen organisational efficiency and impact.

For example, centring the voices of young people in the strategic planning discussions of a nonprofit offering youth programming can generate solutions that most directly meet the needs of the youth. So too can uplifting the voices of lived experience from within the organisation. Staff closest to the ground often have the most valuable insights to offer but are typically excluded from strategic discussions because, at least according to the way that the company is structured on paper, they are not high enough on the organisational chart. 

Imagine the possibilities when a group of people, who are the experts in their own diverse perspectives and experiences, come together to deeply listen, understand and, together, create an outcome. We saw this happen repeatedly during the Covid-19 pandemic, when organisations had to respond rapidly to new and changing needs. By centring the experience of beneficiaries and on the ground staff, organisations were able to quickly come up with new service delivery and ways of working in the face of a crisis. 

I call this ‘idea’ resilience. 

2. Ownership

If more people have had a say in the direction of their organisation, then they are more likely to feel ownership over the implementation of that direction. They can see how they shaped the plan and they can see themselves in it, leading to a stronger sense of belonging. Employees become more autonomous, able to take their own initiative on pushing work forward that is in line with the overall vision, without the need for constant surveillance from leadership.

And with the knowledge and understanding of the plan being so widely permeated across the organisation, the risk of decisions being suspended when a key person leaves is reduced. The more people who know and understand the direction, the easier it is to continue moving forward, even through shocks. 

For example, I worked with an organisation that set a strategic commitment to streamline internal operations because their scale was bigger than their systems. People at all levels of the company were involved in agreeing this big picture direction. 

Almost immediately after the plan was launched, an executive champion of the plan left the organisation. But this didn’t stop the remaining staff from moving forward on the vision. In fact, not long after, one department designed and implemented a new procurement policy that brought all suppliers into one system and helped the company identify a number of cost savings. Staff understood the strategic decision and they pushed forward on implementing it, despite a change at the top. The decision didn't leave when the executive left. 

I call this ‘decision’ resilience.

3. Leadership

By inviting more people into decision-making spaces, organisations can build the capacity of the next generation of leaders to make strategic decisions. 

This requires a lot of trust. I have seen organisations where some members of senior leadership have resisted bringing working-level staff onto decision-making committees because they didn’t think staff had the capacity to make such big decisions. In other cases, executives tell me that their diverse hiring practices won't lead to a change in representation at senior levels for a long time because, in their opinion, people are not ready. 

There is no point in investing in diversity if staff are not given equitable opportunities to build their capacity for decision-making. If we want to build our leadership bench, we have to invest in it.* And through this investment, organisations can set the foundation for their future, whether a leadership gap appears unexpectedly tomorrow or is anticipated in three years’ time. 

I call this ‘leadership’ resilience. 

What other reasons are there for companies to shift towards becoming more collaborative places of work? What examples of success do we have already? Leave a comment below to expand the discussion. 

*See Fund the People's work on Talent Investing.