Product Description

Harvard Business Review on Building Personal and Organizational Resilience

Why do some people bounce back from life's hardships while others despair? This collection of articles looks at the nature of individual and organizational resilience, an issue that has gained special urgency in today's unstable world environment. In the business arena, resilience has found its way onto the list of qualities sought in employees. This collection provides readers with the ability to solve problems without the usual or obvious tools and prepares them to improvise rapid responses to crisis.

The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series

The series is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, here are the leading minds and landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #739280 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Since 1984, Harvard Business School Press has been dedicated to publishing the most contemporary management thinking, written by authors and practitioners who are leading the way. Whether readers are seeking big-picture strategic thinking or tactical problem solving, advice in managing global corporations or for developing personal careers, HBS Press helps fuel the fire of innovative thought. HBS Press has earned a reputation as the springboard of thought for both established and emerging business leaders.

Customer Reviews

From trust to combat zones: a few nuggets of wisdom
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.

Just another Leadership book far from "Resilience" specific
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

"Champions get up when they can't." (Jack Dempsey)

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.