During the COVID-19 pandemic, we inevitably had to deal with the question: What makes businesses resilient? Why is it that Restaurant A is making more sales during this pandemic than before and Restaurant B is on the verge of bankruptcy? What is the reason that Company A has managed to turn this crisis to its advantage and Company B is in permanent trouble, not really knowing how to get out of it yet?
From the ISO standard to the resilience organization model
Already since 2017 there is an international standard, the ISO standard ISO 22316:2017, for organizational resilience. A panel of experts has identified a total of 9 factors that make companies resilient. Resilience, as the ISO standard says, is the key for every company that wants to develop further in a constantly changing world, wants to be successful and wants to survive in the long term.
At persolog, we have been working on the topic of resilience for quite some time and are now developing a profile for organizational resilience based on the 9 resilience factors that the ISO standard describes. In the meantime, we have developed the profile into a model that helps organizations to become more resilient to crises at all relevant levels: the persolog® Resilience Organization Model. Here I would like to introduce you to three of these 9 factors and how we at persolog have experienced what they mean during the pandemic.
#1 Living common goals and visions
I can still remember well when it was announced in March 2020 that face-to-face events could no longer take place. From one day to the next, we at persolog lost 60% of our sales. My feeling at this time was, “No matter which direction I go now, I can really only fall down.” How are you supposed to recoup this loss of revenue? It is not going to come back easily in the foreseeable future, within weeks and months? What became very important for us as a persolog team was to ask: What is our way through the crisis now, if three or more sales factors are lost at once?
We then realized that we had succeeded quite well in switching to live-online events, but this was a major hurdle for many of our trainers. So our mission through the crisis became, and still is, to help trainers do well through the pandemic. And if we can do that, we can do it.
From the vision to the strategy
Our strategy wasn’t polished at that point, but the vision was clear. Especially in difficult times, it’s important for companies to try to give their employees a perspective beyond this time. And show them: This is the strategy we are going with. This is not just about overarching corporate visions. Whenever we had to make a decision at persolog, the overall goal was clear: we’re helping trainers get through this period. Everyone in the company had clarity on that vision. In our weekly meetings, I kept repeating that because it’s so important that everyone knows that vision. And it’s critical that everyone shares that vision in order to move in that direction together.
Subsequently, it’s essential to align actions to that. After all, living shared goals and visions – it can be done on a small scale. Sometimes it can be tedious, but it must be made clear again and again: What is the goal, and where are we going? Because that strengthens organizational resilience.
#2 Exercise empowering leadership
Everyone has to fly themselves. To me, that’s a metaphor for leadership. The idea that management provides the plane and employees just have to sit in it doesn’t work for me. My deepest leadership conviction is that every employee must learn to fly himself. In other words, they have to take responsibility. Why? Because, in my view, that’s the only way a company can develop in today’s world.
If I make all the decisions and everything depends on them, I as a manager am like a funnel through which everything has to pass. That’s too much, because I can’t take care of everything. As a leader, I fly ahead and show the direction. But everyone has to learn to fly behind. This also means that everyone has to take responsibility. Because when employees take on responsibility in freedom, their own initiative is encouraged. Last year, many ideas at persolog came from employees who tried things out and put them into practice. Sometimes I was skeptical myself whether a thing would work. But I kept an open mind and said to myself, “We’re testing this now. Because I don’t know better.”
Educating employees to take personal responsibility
If we want people to learn to move the company forward on their own, without always having to deliver everything from the top, then it’s important that we free our leadership philosophy from the phrase “I know better.” Otherwise, the company will never rise above us. I always congratulate myself on leadership success when I realize: he/she knows better now. That’s what empowering leadership is all about. It also includes paying attention to individual resilience. Because if it’s too much freedom or responsibility for an employee, I have to find another solution for him/her. Not everyone is the same. But at its core, my goal is: I educate employees to take responsibility for themselves. I let them grow freely and beyond myself. Only then can the company grow beyond me. Only then will we be successful in the end.
#3 Practicing situational change management
When it comes to change, and I ask my employees what could be done differently, everyone has an idea. Of course, there is plenty of room for improvement. But the second aspect of change is that if we want to change things, it also means that people have to change. Otherwise, it won’t work. When we ask of who wants to change, it becomes more difficult. Last year in particular, it was extremely important for us at persolog that employees went along with us and were willing to change. That employees approached tasks differently, because otherwise we would not have been able to cope with them. For example, there are our master trainers who had to get involved in suddenly shooting video courses. I challenged them, and they found their way to implement this task.
Considering personality in communication
That’s a problem in many companies. If we think about D, I, S, and C, we know that they react differently to this “pressure to change.” If there is a lack of employee willingness to participate, it doesn’t work. As leaders, we can appeal to this willingness by answering D, I, S and C`s priority questions. Dominant responds energetically and decisively (positively and negatively), asking the question, “What’s the point?” Influencing reacts emotionally (positively and negatively) and asks the question, “Who is going to do this?” Steady reacts cautiously, selflessly, and asks the question, “How are we going to do this?” Cautious reacts critically, and asks the question, “Why something new again?”
In a crisis, it is helpful when we enlist people with dominant behavior to our cause, as they lead the way and simply put things into action. The question of “how” is difficult in change processes. I would not have been able to answer it fully in March 2020. My approach is to answer this question in steps. Step 1 at persolog was: We make our trainers fit for digital training. After that comes the next step. Without needing to know the whole answer yet. If we want to win people over with primarily conscientious behavior in change processes, we have to use facts to convince them of the need for change. I show my employees the sales trend week after week, so that everyone could and can see time and again that we had to change things or that changes have proven successful.
Taking fears and resistance seriously
Situational change management also means taking fears and resistance seriously. Discussing things, informing early on, and keeping organizational identity in mind. Especially last year, this last point became a challenge for persolog. We noticed again and again that what we are doing right now already deviates strongly from what we normally do. Is this still the right direction? We came to the conclusion: yes, because we help trainers develop their business. In doing so, we end up helping people develop. And that is, after all, our slogan: developing organizations through people. So in this process, it is important “not to lose yourself”. Again and again, we have to be clear: This is now the direction we are going.
A Dutch proverb says, “We can’t stop the wind, but we can build windmills”. We can’t prevent things from not going the way we thought they would. We can’t prevent digitalization from having such a push that people end up unemployed. After the pandemic, new crises will come, changes will happen faster and faster. But for everyone working in training and coaching, there is potential here to help people go with it. We can help to build these windmills by using the resources in companies in the right way, releasing them, strengthening them and helping them to cope with this wind. So that in the end a better result is achieved than before.
Debora Karsch,
Author & CEO persolog GmbH
