WILLIAM GUMEDE | Amid wrecking balls like Trump, ANC, here’s how organisations can still thrive

With rising global and South African uncertainty, as US President Donald Trump upends global politics, trade and markets, and as the ANC battles to transform from the unilateral decision-making of one-party dominance to collaborative multiparty governance, threatening the life of the country’s government of national organisations, whether state, private or nonprofit, have to be resilient — able to thrive in adversity, to navigate these shocks and see opportunities in uncertainty.

The Bank for International Settlements said in its latest assessment that the world is entering a “new era of heightened uncertainty and unpredictability”, because of the US-driven trade war, climate change and supply chain disruptions.

Resilience is the ability of individuals, organisations and societies to navigate dramatic changes, crises and setbacks. A key part of resilience is the ability to adapt and use crises to come back stronger afterwards. Organisations, communities and countries that quickly recover from crises are better positioned than their competitors to grasp the opportunities of the upturn.

Not surprisingly, organisational resilience starts with curious, imaginative and emotionally intelligent leaders — that sets the resilience culture, the collective mindset and the right organisational focus. Leaders must have a growth mindset, what US psychologist Carol Dweck described as understanding that your basic qualities, such as intelligence and talent, can be changed or developed. The ability to have curiosity beyond one’s expertise, role or competence is critical to a growth mindset.

A core aspect of individual resilient leadership is the ability to lead oneself. Leaders must be able to see opportunities in challenges to nurture a culture of exploiting obstacles throughout organisations. Organisations must have leaders with a deep perspective: the “ability to widen the lens, to stay present with complexity and to read the moment with nuance”. And deep perspective is “about cultivating the ability to see beyond the obvious, to recognise nuance, and to navigate ambiguity without collapsing it into certainty”.

Perspective “integrates emotional intelligence, systems awareness and contextual depth”. Leadership depth goes beyond just technical competence, “accumulation of certificates and purpose alone”. Priyanka Dutta, an Indian human resources expert, talks about leaders that have depth across multiple areas: work competence, physical, emotional and spiritual. These are the reasons “why despite external influence, opinions, bad economy, difficult situations, challenges, some people come out successful and some don’t”.

Leaders must set an active example of good behaviour. Incompetent, corrupt and unfair leaders undermine organisational resilience, as it breeds distrust, toxicity and lack of organisational cohesion.

Organisations need to nurture resilient organisational cultures, which need to be built in peacetime. Having dependable processes, rules and routines is key for companies if they want to navigate uncertainty. Role clarity, responsibilities and reporting lines must be clearly defined. There have to be clear, transparent and consistent ground rules for communication in organisations. All these must be put in place during good times.

A resilient culture means an individual, organisation or country can make changes during the crisis, meaning there has to be the capacity to make adjustments to strategy, policies and products during crisis. Organisations must nurture the ability among individuals, teams and organisation-wide to improvise during upheaval.

A learning organisational culture is key to a resilient organisational culture. Organisations must adopt a continuous learning, upskilling, mentoring and industry reading culture. A learning culture — one where new ideas can be openly shared — is key in uncertainty.

A resilience culture must permeate through organisational staff, units and teams. Individual, team and organisational resilience is continually built — it is not a one-off process. For organisations to be prepared for uncertainty, they must prioritise reflecting on the state of the organisation, the trading environment it operates in and on strategies to improve performance. A key part of resilience-proofing organisations is the identification of risks, planning for uncertainty and testing the systems beforehand.

A learning organisational culture is key to a resilient organisational culture. Organisations must adopt a continuous learning, upskilling, mentoring and industry reading culture. A learning culture — one where new ideas can be openly shared — is key in uncertainty. Organisations must have the psychological safety for team members to proposes changes, adjustments and product adaptations. Technology must be embraced, rather than ignored. Data-based learning and decision is key to anticipate market changes — and to respond to these.

Leaders must be transparent to employees about company strategies, direction and objectives — and challenges. There must be a common understanding of success that permeates across business units and teams. This builds common ownerships — and provide the space for employees to provide unique ideas, innovations and strategies. Leaders are critical in ensuring a culture of psychological safety in their organisations.

To this, it is critical that organisations have open lines of communication — where management and employees are able to share information honestly, without fear of negative reprisals. This means having an open-door approach, allowing feedback whether direct or anonymously. Part of an open communication strategy is to give space to feedback. Not all feedback will be useful, but explaining why feedback would not be used or implemented is critical. Leaders are critical in ensuring a culture of psychological safety in their organisations.

Open cultures in organisations foster high-performance organisational cultures; reduce destructive behaviours, such as bullying, gossip, manipulation and belittling. Organisations must prioritise the wellbeing of individual employees.

Worse, in organisations without open cultures, a toxic culture could spring up, in which employees are reluctant to speak up or share ideas. In a toxic environment, unethical behaviour, such as cutting corners, lying and racism, thrives. Open cultures can lift organisational morale.

A healthy workplace culture includes encouraging healthy work-life boundaries for employees, supporting employees’ career development, allowing for some space for mistakes, refraining from micromanaging and empowering employees to make decisions within their spheres of authority. Employees’ contribution to success must be recognised. Employees must be seen, appreciated and rewarded for sterling efforts.

Innovation must be a key component of organisational culture to keep up with market, customer, competitive and technological changes. There has to be a regular assessment of how things are done, whether these are still relevant, and what can be done more efficiently, with new technology or with new processes.

A pillar for resilience strengthening is for organisations to fully adopt sustainability as part of the organisational culture. Sustainability must be incorporated when investment decisions, policies and products are made. Customers, investors, employees and stakeholders are increasingly demanding that companies be serious and genuine about sustainability.

Finally, individuals, teams and organisations must see uncertainty as an opportunity to not only fortify the organisation, but to innovate and find new markets, make new products and provide new services; and seeing challenges brought on by uncertainty, change and crises as chances to strengthen the tangible and intangible assets of the organisation.

• Prof William Gumede is professor of practice, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand and author of the best-selling  Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).

This is an extract of his recent talk at Chelete Management’s conference on business resilience given increasing domestic and geopolitical, trade and market uncertainty.

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