The Resilience Revolution

Resilience is now recognised as one of the defining requirements of any big project, whether that is expressed in terms of the infrastructure asset, the organisation or system behind the project, or the network of individuals that make up the project delivery team and the wider stakeholders.

Our three contributors to the Delivery Podcast episode on this theme (Kristen MacAskill, Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge; Elmar Kutsch, Associate Professor in Risk Management at Cranfield School of Management; and Donnie MacNicol of Team Animation), take us on a guided tour of this big and often slippery subject, including:

• how to establish the level of robustness we'd like, within a budget we can afford
• prioritizing your most critical assets and planning for safe levels of failure
• the paradox we face when trying to establish system redundancies
• the dangers of not looking beyond our own routines and habits
• the meaning of resilience for an individual
• balancing the tension between an approach that is defensive vs one that is progressive, and of favouring consistency against flexibility
• what kind of people you need when resilience is critical
• the relationship between project management and resilience
• the role and value of natural systems
• the role of improvisation in managing the unexpected

and introduce us to a rich variety of frameworks and models to help our understanding, such as:

• the four R's of infrastructure reliance;
• The 4X4 matrix of consistency vs flexibility and progressive vs defensive Organizational Resilience: A summary of academic evidence, business insights and new thinking (cranfield.ac.uk)
• the Shenhar/Dvir Diamond Model of project complexity Project Type Profiling Based on the Ideal Company Project (pmi.org)
• the Cynefin Framework About - Cynefin Framework - The Cynefin Co

before closing with a call to arms for a Resilience Revolution.