Building Resiliency$8$

D$.$ Burba

This article clearly describes the dangers of our faster, more volatile, and more global markets for organizations that have trouble changing their structures and responses. Change involves more risk, but lack of change guarantees falling behind, faster and faster. Resilience$$the ability of a system to cope with change$$is the solution. Being more agile, flexible, and executing faster and more efficiently are all components of resilience, but these must be ingrained in the organization, which takes time and conscious effort.

In the $21$st century, competitive disruption is business as usual. Just look at the airline industry: In less than $15$ years, four upstart $$super$$connector$$ airlines$$Emirates$,$ Qatar, Etihad and Turkish$$have surpassed the reach of formerly dominant carriers based in Europe. And they$$re beginning to move into the traditional turf of U$.$S$.$based airlines.

How to respond to aggressive competitors and navigate volatile markets quickly and successfully is the crux of organizational agility. No longer a buzz$$word$,$ agility is a must$$have for project success in rapidly evolving sectors$$which these days is most.

$$To be prepared for the future, you need both a culture and an organizational structure that provide the flexibility needed in a changeable environment,$$ says Jorge Alberto P$$rez Torres, PMP$,$ organization deputy director at insurance firm Allianz, Mexico City, Mexico. $$The word $$resilience$$the ability of a system to cope with change$$fits very well in this case.$$

PMI$$s $2015$ Pulse of the Profession$$: Capturing the Value of Project Management Through Organizational Agility in$$depth report found that $75$ percent of organizations with a highly developed culture of agility are able to quickly respond to market conditions, compared to $12$ percent of organizations with an underdeveloped culture of agility.

The contrast was similar with customer satisfaction ratings $(85$ percent compared to $23$ percent$).$

Yet cultivating organizational agility isn$$t easy. Organizations aren$$t monoliths; they$$re made up of people, and getting people to change their habits of mind and behavior takes time and effort. When organizations create a culture of agility that enables projects and programs$$their most strategic initiatives$$to be completed faster and more efficiently than ever before, they are better positioned to thrive in uncertain economic conditions. According to the Pulse report, organizations can accomplish this by establishing a five$$part$,$ self$$reinforcing framework consisting of supportive culture, strategic flexibility, collective leadership, capable people, and adaptive process.

But the real challenge for organizations looking to increase their agility is figuring out how to ingrain these capabilities so deeply in the project culture that they become second nature. There$$s no getting around the time and conscious effort this requires.