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Harvard Business Review on Building Personal and Organizational Resilience (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)

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In today's unstable global environment we appreciate more than ever the virtue of resilience in both individuals and organizations. This collection promises to provide you with the ability to solve problems without the usual or obvious tools and prepares them to improvise rapid responses to crisis. You *will* find enough solid contributions here to justify the purchase, unless you already have the original HBR articles. The pieces range from Robert Galford and Anne Siebold Drapeau's February 2003 "The Enemies of Trust" back to William Patagonis's "Leadership in a Combat Zone" from late 1992.

These two pieces also hint at the diversity of the collection hidden under the title. Patagonis writes about how he directed the logistics of the 1991 Gulf War. He explains that leading successfully requires a person to demonstrate expertise and empathy - which can be systematically learned and true leaders create organizations that support the cultivation of leadership. Galford and Drapeau analyze the role of trust, finding a disparity between managers beliefs about their own and their colleague's trustworthiness and their lack of confidence in their ability to build trust within the organization. In explaining the disparity, the authors distinguish three kids of trust: Strategic trust, personal trust, and organizational trust.

Two of the strongest pieces are Diane Coutu's "How Resilience Works" and "A Survival Guide for Leaders" by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky. Coutu explains resilience at its toughest as consisting of a staunch acceptance of reality, a deep belief, often bolstered by strongly held values, that life is meaningful, and a well-developed ability to improvise. One weakness of this piece is that the reader is left to figure out how to go about the development process if no crisis forces the issue. Heifetz and Linsky draw on their book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading to explain risk management for leaders in two parts: An externally-focused part offers tactical advice about relating to your organization and the people who comprise it. The internally-focused part focuses on your human needs and vulnerabilities to help you from defeating yourself.

The other pieces included are: "Leading in Times of Trauma" by Jane E. Dutton, Peter J. Frost, Monica C. Worline, Jacoba M. Lilius, and Jason M. Kanov; "Crucibles of Leadership" by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas; "The Toxic Handler: Organizational Hero - and Casualty" by Peter J. Frost and Sandra Robinson; and "September 11, 2001: A CEO's Story" by Jeffrey W. Greenburg.

Leading in the contemporary world is harder then ever before. More and more skills are asked from leaders. Especially resilience is a skill that managers not only look for in employees but also a skill that every leader and every organization want to achieve. The book "Harvard Business Review on Building Personal and Organizational Resilience" focuses on the topic of resilience. It consists of eight articles published between 1992 and 2003. The articles are written by 15 Canadian and American academics, researchers, and managers, all being experts in the given topic.
The "Harvard Business Review on Building Personal and Organizational Resilience" is part of the Harvard Business Paperback Series published to help managers to stay competitive. It is released by the Harvard Business Publishing (a company owned by the University of Harvard). Their goal is to improve the practise of management publishing for educational institutions, corporations, and individual managers.
All articles focus on individual or organizational resilience. The authors especially give attention to times of crisis as a time when resilience develops.
By using many examples the authors constitute their subject interesting, easy understandable and concrete. Although all articles are written by different authors they amend each other and therefore create an good overview about what is most important concerning resilience.
The first chapter "How Resilience Works" (2002), written by D. L. Coutu, concentrates on the characteristics of a resilient person. In her opinion a resilient person accepts the reality, has a deep believe by strongly held values and has the ability to improvise a solution even without proper tools. A person that faces the world in a resilient way is prepared to survive extraordinary hardship.
The chapter Leading in Times of Trauma" (2002) by J. E. Dutton, P. J. Frost, M.C. Worline, J. M. Lilius, and J. M. Kanov concentrates on the communication structures in organizations. It is pointed out that an organization should show compassion to their employees after traumatic circumstances and should allow them to communicate their feelings in order to make them feel understood and more embedded to the organisation. Being compassionate as an organisation also increases the attachment to the organisation of the colleagues witnessing such a compassionate act. As a result the organisation can maintain high performance.
The skills needed by a great leader are emphazised by W. G. Bennis and R. J. Thomas in their article "Crucibles of Leadership" (2002). They underline that a really good leader needs to have the ability to learn even from the most negative experiences and should be able to handle adversity. Other skills mentioned are the sense of integrity, an adaptive capacity and the ability to engage others in shared meaning.
The article "A Survival Guide for Leaders" (2002), written by R. A. Heifetz and M. Linsky, seems to be the most significant in this book. The authors consider the environment of the leader needed for adaptive changes and provide a range of tactics that can be used by the leader to effectively? interact with the people around. Besides they mind the needs and vulnerabilities of leaders and give advices how to remain focused and persistent.
The chapter "The Toxic Handler" (1999), written by P.J. Frost and S. Robinson, is special as it discusses a resource that needs to be considered by the leader in order to gain a resilient organization. A Toxic Handler, as a person shouldering the sadness of others, keeps the organization going. With his competence to listen empathetically, suggest solutions, work behind the scenes to prevent pain, carry the confidences of others and reframe difficult messages, he plays a very important role in organisations.
The articles "Leading in a Combat Zone" ,written by W. G. Pagonis, and "September 11, 2001: A CEO's Story" ,written by J. W. Greenberg, are more like field reports. They show exemplary how difficult situations like leading in the Golf War and leading after September 11 were handled.
Based on his experiences while leading in the Golf War W.G. Pagonis explains his point of view concerning the most important skills in leadership. He especially underlines the importance of expertise and empathy in leadership. From his point of view expertise and empathy need to be cultivated on personal and organizational level.
In the article, written by Greenberg, the good resilience of the organization was shown on September 11. Right after the terror attacks many employees helped to establish communication structure in order to get to know what happened to their colleagues. Furthermore family support was offered. Besides that Greenberg managed to keep the business running.
In my opinion this book can help managers reflect on the structure of their organization and their own position and skills. Also for non-managers the book can help to gain a greater understanding of the difficulties of leadership and the processes in an organization. I would not recommend this book to researchers as it is based rather on subjective experiences than on scientific research and therefore rather has an subjective frame.
The article "The Enemies of Trust" written by R. Galford and A.S. Drapeau, explains why trust in an organization is important and what the difficulties are in order to establish trust.
The advantage of the book is the diversity of the collection as every chapter is written by a different author and therefore many points of view are shown. Although it is not a textbook the reader obtains a lot of new and helpful information about what needs to be considered as a leader. Aside from that the book points out how to handle the challenges of leadership. By using many examples as well as presenting personal experiences the authors achieve the readers interest in the topic. As it is easy to read the reader gains a greater understanding of the topic.
As a disadvantage it can be seen that the authors base their findings rather on personal impressions than on research. Caused by the many examples the reader probably gets the impression that there is rather few substance.
By comparing this book with one of the many other books about management it has the big advantage that the articles are written by many different authors. For those who are interested in reading more about leadership and resilience I would also recommend the book "How to suceed no matter what life throws at you. Resilience at work" written by S.R. Maddi and D.M. Khoshaba. On the homepage of the Harvard Business Review [...] it is also possible to download articles of the book "Harvard Business Review on Building Personal and Organisational Resilience".
Taking everything into account I would recommend the "Harvard Business Review on Building Personal and Organisational Resilience" to everyone who is interested in organizations and leadership. I would also recommend people who would like to take a critical look at their own organization and personal skills to read this book.

A very good read. Contains articles taked from Harvard Business Review on:

* How Resilience Works
*Leading in Times of Trauma
*Crucibles of Leadership
*A Survival Guide for Leaders
* Toxic Handlers
*Leadership in a Combat Zone
*9/11/01 - A CEO's Story of MMC Corp
*Enemies of Trust

The focus of the articles are on the challenges of leadership in crisis, as well as the needs and casualties caused by challenges in the workplace. In particular, the article on "A Survival Guide For Leaders" is a must read for anyone in a leadership role. It is a good reminder of the true challenges of leadership, organizational resistence and means to overcome those challenges.

This book has little to do with resilence nor the building of it, but descriptive accounts of trauma/change/disaster handling (911 is frequently mentioned) that are normally grouped under "Leadership". Perhaps the only exception is Chapter One "How Resilience Works" by Diane Coutu, which discusses that "Resilience is a reflex, a way of facing and understanding the world, that is deeply etched into a person's mind and soul. Resilient people and companies face reality with stauchness, make meaning of hardship instead of crying out in despair, and improvise solutions from thin air. Others do not. This is the nature of resilience, and we will never completely undestand it." In short, this may be a good book on management. However, if you want to read something specific about resilience and how to build it, please look somewhere else.

As usual, below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference.

Multiple backup sites seemed like an incredible extravagance on 910. But on 912, they seemed like genius. - Robert G Scott, President and COO, Morgan Stanley pg 9

When people know they can bring their pain to the office, they no longer have to expend energy trying to ignore or suppress it, and they can more easily and effectively get back to work. pg 25

It's better to think through the Sunday game on Saturday than to kick the corpse on Monday. pg 129

Several uncomfortable truths about organizational life:- pg173
- there's no such thing as a private conversation
- there's no such thing as a casual conversation
- people sometimes hear what they most fear
- trauma has a long half-life
- no good deed goes unpunished
- Newton's third law doesnt always apply

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes which comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarding experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section which usually includes suggestions of other sources which some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, the reader is provided with eight articles. Given when they first appeared in the HBR, some but remarkably little of the material is dated. Here are brief excerpts from the executive summaries with precede four of them:

How Resilience Works (Diane L. Coutu): She "looks at the nature of individual and organizational resilience, issues that have gained special urgency in light of recent terrorist attacks, war, and recession." Three fundamental characteristics seem to set resilient people and companies apart from others. "The first is the capacity to accept and face down reality. In looking hard at reality, we prepare ourselves to act in ways that allow us to endure and survive hardships. Second, resilient people and organizations possess an ability to find meaning in some [especially painful] aspects of life. The third building block of resilience is the ability to improvise." (May, 2002)

Crucibles of Leadership (Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas): Bennis and Thomas believe that there is no simple formula to explain how great leaders come to be but suggest "that its has something to do with the ways people handle adversity. [Their most research for a book published later, Geeks and Geezers] suggests that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is the ability to learn from even the most negative experiences. An extraordinary leader is a kind of phoenix rising from the ashes of adversity stronger and more committed than ever." They call these shaping experiences "crucibles, after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold" and suggest that great leaders possess four essential skills, "the most critical of which is `adaptive capacity' -- an almost magical ability to transcend adversity and emerge stronger than before." (September, 2002)


A Survival Guide for Leaders (Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky): "Let's face it, to lead is to live dangerously." Heifetz and Linsky offer a number of techniques -- relatively straightforward in concept but difficult to execute -- "for protecting yourself as you lead" change initiatives which threaten, indeed disrupt the status quo. Their article has two main parts. "The first looks outward, offering tactical advice about relating to your organization and the people in it. It is designed to protect you from those who would push you aside before you complete your initiatives. The second looks inward, focusing on your own needs and vulnerabilities. It is designed from keeping you from brining yourself down." (June, 2002)

The Enemies of Trust (Robert Galford and Anne Seybold Drapeau): "Any act of bad management erodes trust, so the list of potential enemies is endless. Among the most common enemies of trust, though, are inconsistent messages from top management, inconsistent standards [and/or inconsistent application of specified standards], a willingness to tolerate incompetence or bad behavior, dishonest feedback, a failure to trust others to do good work, a tendency to ignore painful or politically charged situations, consistent corporate underperformance, and rumors. Fending off these enemies must be at the top of every chief executive's agenda." (February, 2003)

Hopefully these four brief excerpts encourage those with whom I now share them to obtain a copy of this volume and then read all of the eight articles.