Resilience Isn't Built in a Storm

Resilience isn't built in the middle of a crisis. It's built long before one starts.

On a nuclear submarine, we didn't prepare for a specific emergency. We prepared for any and every emergency. The drills were relentless, sometimes inconvenient, and absolutely non-negotiable.

Because when something goes wrong 400 feet below the surface, you don't get to call a consultant.

Most companies I work with think about resilience like insurance. It’s something you buy after something breaks.

A backup supplier after a shortage.

A new hire after a key departure.

A process after a costly mistake.

That's not resilience. That's recovery. And recovery is always expensive.

Real resilience is embedded in your culture. The team has practiced and trained for the emergencies and knows what to do. Your organization handles disruption without turning you into a shock absorber.

Companies today are dealing with real disruption: tariff swings, supply chain shocks, and key employee losses, just to name a few.

Handling these without going into crisis mode requires a culture with these traits:

• Bad news travels fast because leadership made it safe to report it. This enables the organization to quickly recognize and address the issue before it becomes a crisis.  Early in my career, my manager gave me some excellent advice: “Never be the senior person who knows about a problem.”

• Decision-making is distributed: problems get solved closest to where they happen. A team that is always asking permission loses their creativity and issue resolution slows down. Some of the best solutions I’ve seen to manufacturing problems came directly from the line workers.

• Cross-training and redundancy aren't nice-to-haves, they're operational requirements. Absenteeism is a major issue that I faced throughout my career. When we put a concentrated focus on cross-training the team, we had the flexibility to handle absences without downtime.

  
  

None of that gets built during the storm.

👉 If your most critical person walked out tomorrow, would your operation absorb it — or would it land on your desk?