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HAR AT LARGE How Resilience Works The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice These are dark days: people are losing jobs, Resilience can help you survive and recover CONTINUALLY IMPROVISE taking pay cuts, suffering foreclosure on from even the most brutal experiences. To cul- their homes. Some of them are snapping- tivace resilience, apply these practices: When disaster hits, be inventive. Make the sinking into depression or suffering a per- most of what you have, putting resources to manent loss of confidence. FACE DOWN REALITY unfamiliar uses and imagining possibilities But others are snapping back; for example, Instead of slipping into denial to cope with others don't see. taking advantage of a layoff to build a new hardship, take a sober, down-to-earth view of Example: career. What carries them through tough the reality of your situation. You'll prepare Mike founded a business with his friend times? Resilience. yourself to act in ways that enable you to en- Paul, selling educational materials to dure-training yourself to survive before the schools, businesses, and consulting firms. Resilient people possess three defining fact. When a recession hit, they lost many core characteristics: They coolly accept the harsh realities facing them. They find meaning in Example clients. Paul went through a bitter divorce, Admiral Jim Stockdale survived being held suffered a depression, and couldn't work. terrible times And they have an uncanny When Mike offered to buy him out, Paul ability to improvise, making do with what- prisoner and tortured by the Vietcong in slapped him with a lawsuit claiming Mike ever's at hand. part by accepting he could be held for a long time. (He was held for eight years.) was trying to steal the business. In deep recessions, resilience becomes Those who didn't make it out of the camps Mike kept the company going any way he more important than ever. Fortunately, you kept optimistically assuming they'd be re- could-going into joint ventures to sell can learn to be resilient. leased on shorter timetables-by Christ- English-language training materials to Russian mas, by Easter, by the Fourth of July. "I think and Chinese competitors, publishing news- they all died of broken hearts," Stockdale letters for clients, and even writing video said. scripts for competitors. The lawsuit was eventually settled in his favor, and he had a SEARCH FOR MEANING new and much more solid business than When hard times strike, resist any impulse to the one he started out with. view yourself as a victim and to cry, "Why me?" Rather, devise constructs about your suffering to create meaning for yourself and others. You'll build bridges from your present-day ordeal to a fuller, better future. Those bridges will make the present manageable, by removing the sense that the present is overwhelming. Example Austrian psychiatrist and Auschwitz survi- COPYRIGHTO DORHARVARDBUSINESS SCHOOL PLAUSHINGCORPORATION. ALL RICHT S RE SERVED. wor Victor Frankl realized that to survive the camp, he had to find some purpose. He did so by imagining himself giving a lecture after the war on the psychology of the con- centration camp to help outsiders under- stand what he had been through By creat- ing concrete goals for himself, he rose above the sufferings of the moment. PAGE 1Confronted with life's hardships, some people snap, and others snap back. HBR AT LARGE How Resilience Works by Diane L. Coutu When I began my career in journalism-I was mentoring the cub reporters, talking about a reporter at a national magazine in those the novels he was writing-always looking days-there was a man I'll call Claus Schmidt. forward to what the future held for him. He was in his mid-fifties, and to my impres- Why do some people suffer real hardships sionable eyes, he was the quintessential and not falter? Claus Schmidt could have re- newsman: cynical at times, but unrelentingly acted very differently. We've all seen that curious and full of life, and often hilariously happen: One person cannot seem to get the funny in a sandpaper-dry kind of way. He confidence back after a layoff; another, per- churned out hard-hitting cover stories and fea- sistently depressed, takes a few years off from tures with a speed and elegance I could only life after her divorce. The question we would dream of. It always astounded me that he was all like answered is, Why? What exactly is never promoted to managing editor. that quality of resilience that carries people But people who knew Claus better than I through life? did thought of him not just as a great news- It's a question that has fascinated me ever man but as a quintessential survivor, some- since I first learned of the Holocaust survivors one who had endured in an environment in elementary school. In college, and later in often hostile to talent. He had lived through my studies as an affiliate scholar at the Bos- at least three major changes in the magazine's ton Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, I leadership, losing most of his best friends and returned to the subject. For the past several colleagues on the way. At home, two of his months, however, I have looked on it with a children succumbed to incurable illnesses, new urgency, for it seems to me that the ter- and a third was killed in a traffic accident. De- rorism, war, and recession of recent months spite all this-or maybe because of it-he have made understanding resilience more milled around the newsroom day after day, important than ever. I have considered both AILD BUSINESS REVIEW . MAY 2002 PAGE 2the nature of individual resilience and what dent and CEO of Adaptiv Learning Systems, a makes some organizations as a whole more four-year-old company in King of Prussia, resilient than others. Why do some people Pennsylvania, that develops and delivers pro- and some companies buckle under pressure? grams about resilience training, puts it: "More And what makes others bend and ultimately than education, more than experience, more bounce back? than training, a person's level of resilience will My exploration has taught me much about determine who succeeds and who fails. That's resilience, although it's a subject none of us true in the cancer ward, it's true in the Olym will ever understand fully. Indeed, resilience pics, and it's true in the boardroom." is one of the great puzzles of human nature, Academic research into resilience started like creativity or the religious instinct. But in about 40 years ago with pioneering studies by sifting through psychological research and in Norman Garmezy, now a professor emeritus reflecting on the many stories of resilience at the University of Minnesota in Minneapo I've heard, I have seen a little more deeply lis. After studying why many children of into the hearts and minds of people like Claus schizophrenic parents did not suffer psycho- Schmidt and, in doing so, looked more deeply logical illness as a result of growing up with into the human psyche as well. them, he concluded that a certain quality of resilience played a greater role in mental The Buzz About Resilience health than anyone had previously suspected. Resilience is a hot topic in business these days. Today, theories abound about what makes Not long ago, I was talking to a senior partner resilience. Looking at Holocaust victims, Mau- at a respected consulting firm about how to rice Vanderpol, a former president of the Bos- land the very best MBAs-the name of the ton Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, game in that particular industry. The partner, found that many of the healthy survivors of Daniel Savageau (not his real name), ticked concentration camps had what he calls a off a long list of qualities his firm sought in its "plastic shield." The shield was comprised of hires: intelligence, ambition, integrity, ana- several factors, including a sense of humor. lytic ability, and so on. "What about resilience?" Often the humor was black, but nonetheless I asked. "Well, that's very popular right now," it provided a critical sense of perspective. he said. "It's the new buzzword. Candidates Other core characteristics that helped included even tell us they're resilient; they volunteer the ability to form attachments to others and the information. But frankly, they're just too the possession of an inner psychological space young to know that about themselves. Resil- that protected the survivors from the intru- ience is something you realize you have after sions of abusive others. Research about other the fact." groups uncovered different qualities associ- "But if you could, would you test for it?" I ated with resilience. The Search Institute, a asked. "Does it matter in business?" Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization Savageau paused. He's a man in his late for- that focuses on resilience and youth, found ties and a success personally and profession- that the more resilient kids have an uncanny ally. Yet it hadn't been a smooth ride to the ability to get adults to help them out. Still top. He'd started his life as a poor French Ca- other research showed that resilient inner-city nadian in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and had youth often have talents such as athletic abili- lost his father at six. He lucked into a football ties that attract others to them. scholarship but was kicked out of Boston Uni- Many of the early theories about resilience versity twice for drinking. He turned his life stressed the role of genetics. Some people are around in his twenties, married, divorced, re- just born resilient, so the arguments went. married, and raised five children. Along the There's some truth to that, of course, but an way, he made and lost two fortunes before increasing body of empirical evidence shows helping to found the consulting firm he now that resilience-whether in children, survi- runs. "Yes, it does matter," he said at last. "In vors of concentration camps, or businesses fact, it probably matters more than any of the back from the brink-can be learned. For Coutu is a senior editor at usual things we look for." In the course of re- example, George Vaillant, the director of the cializing in psychology and porting this article, I heard the same assertion Study of Adult Development at Harvard time and again. As Dean Becker, the presi- Medical School in Boston, observes that BUSINESS REVIEW . MAY 2002 PAGE 3within various groups studied during a 60-year not to say that optimism doesn't have its period, some people became markedly more place: In turning around a demoralized sales resilient over their lifetimes. Other psycholo- force, for instance, conjuring a sense of possi- gists claim that unresilient people more eas- bility can be a very powerful tool. But for big- ily develop resiliency skills than those with ger challenges, a cool, almost pessimistic, head starts. sense of reality is far more important. Most of the resilience theories I encoun- Perhaps you're asking yourself, "Do I truly tered in my research make good common understand-and accept-the reality of my sense. But I also observed that almost all the situation? Does my organization?"Those are theories overlap in three ways. Resilient peo- good questions, particularly because research ple, they posit, possess three characteristics: a suggests most people slip into denial as a cop- staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, ing mechanism. Facing reality, really facing it, often buttressed by strongly held values, that is grueling work. Indeed, it can be unpleasant life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to and often emotionally wrenching. Consider the improvise. You can bounce back from hard- following story of organizational resilience, ship with just one or two of these qualities, and see what it means to confront reality. but you will only be truly resilient with all Prior to September 11, 2001, Morgan Stan- three. These three characteristics hold true ley, the famous investment bank, was the larg- for resilient organizations as well. Let's take a est tenant in the World Trade Center. The look at each of them in turn. company had some 2,700 employees working in the south tower on 22 floors between the Facing Down Reality 43rd and the 74th. On that horrible day, the A common belief about resilience is that it first plane hit the north tower at 8:46 AM, and "More than education, stems from an optimistic nature. That's true Morgan Stanley started evacuating just one but only as long as such optimism doesn't dis- minute later, at 8:47 AM. When the second more than experience, tort your sense of reality. In extremely adverse plane crashed into the south tower 15 minutes more than training, a situations, rose-colored thinking can actually after that, Morgan Stanley's offices were spell disaster. This point was made poignantly largely empty. All told, the company lost only person's level of resilience to me by management researcher and writer seven employees despite receiving an almost will determine who Jim Collins, who happened upon this concept direct hit. while researching Good to Great, his book on Of course, the organization was just plain succeeds and who fails. how companies transform themselves out of lucky to be in the second tower. Cantor mediocrity. Collins had a hunch (an exactly Fitzgerald, whose offices were hit in the first That's true in the cancer wrong hunch) that resilient companies were attack, couldn't have done anything to save its ward, it's true in the filled with optimistic people. He tried out that employees. Still, it was Morgan Stanley's idea on Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was held hard-nosed realism that enabled the company Olympics, and it's true in prisoner and tortured by the Vietcong for to benefit from its luck. Soon after the 1993 the boardroom." eight years. attack on the World Trade Center, senior Collins recalls: "I asked Stockdale: "Who management recognized that working in such didn't make it out of the camps?' And he said, a symbolic center of U.5. commercial power "Oh, that's easy. It was the optimists. They made the company vulnerable to attention were the ones who said we were going to be from terrorists and possible attack. out by Christmas. And then they said we'd be With this grim realization, Morgan Stanley out by Easter and then out by Fourth of July launched a program of preparedness at the and out by Thanksgiving, and then it was micro level. Few companies take their fire Christmas again! Then Stockdale turned to drills seriously. Not so Morgan Stanley, whose me and said, "You know, I think they all died VP of security for the Individual Investor of broken hearts." Group, Rick Rescorla, brought a military dis- In the business world, Collins found the cipline to the job. Rescorla, himself a highly same unblinking attitude shared by execu- resilient, decorated Vietnam vet, made sure tives at all the most successful companies he that people were fully drilled about what to studied. Like Stockdale, resilient people have do in a catastrophe. When disaster struck on very sober and down-to-earth views of those September 11, Rescorla was on a bullhorn tell- parts of reality that matter for survival. That's ing Morgan Stanley employees to stay calm HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW . MAY 2002 PAGE 4and follow their well-practiced drill, even build bridges from present-day hardships to a though some building supervisors were tell- fuller, better constructed future. Those ing occupants that all was well. Sadly, Res- bridges make the present manageable, for corla himself, whose life story has been lack of a better word, removing the sense that widely covered in recent months, was one of the present is overwhelming. This concept the seven who didn't make it out. was beautifully articulated by Viktor E. "When you're in financial services where so Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and an Aus- much depends on technology, contingency chwitz survivor. In the midst of staggering planning is a major part of your business," suffering, Frankl invented "meaning therapy," says President and COO Robert G. Scott. But a humanistic therapy technique that helps in- Morgan Stanley was prepared for the very dividuals make the kinds of decisions that will toughest reality. It had not just one, but three, create significance in their lives. recovery sites where employees could congre- In his book Man's Search for Meaning, gate and business could take place if work lo- Frankl described the pivotal moment in the cales were ever disrupted. "Multiple backup camp when he developed meaning therapy. sites seemed like an incredible extravagance He was on his way to work one day, worrying on September 10," concedes Scott. "But on whether he should trade his last cigarette for September 12, they seemed like genius" a bowl of soup. He wondered how he was Maybe it was genius; it was undoubtedly going to work with a new foreman whom he resilience at work. The fact is, when we truly knew to be particularly sadistic. Suddenly, he stare down reality, we prepare ourselves to act was disgusted by just how trivial and mean- in ways that allow us to endure and survive ingless his life had become. He realized that extraordinary hardship. We train ourselves to survive, he had to find some purpose. how to survive before the fact. Frankl did so by imagining himself giving a lecture after the war on the psychology of the The Search for Meaning concentration camp, to help outsiders under- The ability to see reality is closely linked to stand what he had been through. Although the second building block of resilience, the he wasn't even sure he would survive, Frankl propensity to make meaning of terrible created some concrete goals for himself. In times. We all know people who, under duress, doing so, he succeeded in rising above the throw up their hands and cry, "How can this sufferings of the moment. As he put it in his be happening to me?" Such people see them- book: "We must never forget that we may also selves as victims, and living through hardship find meaning in life even when confronted carries no lessons for them. But resilient with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate people devise constructs about their suffering that cannot be changed." to create some sort of meaning for themselves Frankl's theory underlies most resilience and others. coaching in business. Indeed, I was struck I have a friend I'll call Jackie Oiseaux who by how often businesspeople referred to suffered repeated psychoses over a ten-year his work. "Resilience training-what we call period due to an undiagnosed bipolar disor hardiness-is a way for us to help people con- der. Today, she holds down a big job in one of struct meaning in their everyday lives," ex- the top publishing companies in the country, plains Salvatore R. Maddi, a University of has a family, and is a prominent member of California, Irvine psychology professor and her church community. When people ask her the director of the Hardiness Institute in how she bounced back from her crises, she Newport Beach, California. "When people re- runs her hands through her hair. "People alize the power of resilience training, they sometimes say, "Why me?" But I've always often say, 'Doc, is this what psychotherapy is?" said, "Why not me?" True, I lost many things But psychotherapy is for people whose lives during my illness," she says, "but I found have fallen apart badly and need repair. We many more-incredible friends who saw me see our work as showing people life skills and through the bleakest times and who will give attitudes. Maybe those things should be meaning to my life forever." taught at home, maybe they should be taught This dynamic of meaning making is, most in schools, but they're not. So we end up researchers agree, the way resilient people doing it in business." BUSINESS REVIEW . MAY 2002 PAGE SYet the challenge confronting resilience The religious connotations of words like trainers is often more difficult than we might "credo," "values," and "noble purpose," how- imagine. Meaning can be elusive, and just be- ever, should not be confused with the actual cause you found it once doesn't mean you'll content of the values. Companies can hold keep it or find it again. Consider Aleksandr ethically questionable values and still be very Solzhenitsyn, who survived the war against resilient. Consider Phillip Morris, which has the Nazis, imprisonment in the gulag, and demonstrated impressive resilience in the face cancer. Yet when he moved to a farm in of increasing unpopularity. As Jim Collins peaceful, safe Vermont, he could not cope points out, Phillip Morris has very strong with the "infantile West." He was unable to values, although we might not agree with discern any real meaning in what he felt to be them-for instance, the value of "adult the destructive and irresponsible freedom of choice." But there's no doubt that Phillip Mor- the West. Upset by his critics, he withdrew ris executives believe strongly in its values, into his farmhouse, behind a locked fence, and the strength of their beliefs sets the com- seldom to be seen in public. In 1994, a bitter pany apart from most of the other tobacco man, Solzhenitsyn moved back to Russia. companies. In this context, it is worth noting Since finding meaning in one's environment that resilience is neither ethically good nor is such an important aspect of resilience, it bad. It is merely the skill and the capacity to should come as no surprise that the most suc- be robust under conditions of enormous stress cessful organizations and people possess and change. As Viktor Frankl wrote: "On the strong value systems. Strong values infuse an average, only those prisoners could keep alive environment with meaning because they offer who, after years of trekking from camp to ways to interpret and shape events. While it's camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for ex- Resilience is neither popular these days to ridicule values, it's istence; they were prepared to use every surely no coincidence that the most resilient means, honest and otherwise, even brutal.., in ethically good nor bad. It organization in the world has been the Catho- order to save themselves. We who have come is merely the skill and the lic Church, which has survived wars, corrup- back..we know: The best of us did not return." tion, and schism for more than 2,ooo years, Values, positive or negative, are actually capacity to be robust thanks largely to its immutable set of values. more important for organizational resilience under conditions of Businesses that survive also have their creeds, than having resilient people on the payroll. If which give them purposes beyond just making resilient employees are all interpreting reality enormous stress and money. Strikingly, many companies describe in different ways, their decisions and actions their value systems in religious terms. Phar- may well conflict, calling into doubt the sur- change. maceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, for vival of their organization. And as the weak- instance, calls its value system, set out in a ness of an organization becomes apparent, document given to every new employee at ori- highly resilient individuals are more likely to entation, the Credo. Parcel company UPS talks jettison the organization than to imperil their constantly about its Noble Purpose. own survival. Value systems at resilient companies change very little over the years and are used Ritualized Ingenuity as scaffolding in times of trouble. UPS Chair- The third building block of resilience is the man and CEO Mike Eskew believes that the ability to make do with whatever is at hand. Noble Purpose helped the company to rally Psychologists follow the lead of French an- after the agonizing strike in 1997. Says Eskew: thropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in calling this "It was a hugely difficult time, like a family skill bricolage.' Intriguingly, the roots of that feud. Everyone had close friends on both word are closely tied to the concept of resil- sides of the fence, and it was tough for us to ience, which literally means "bouncing back." pick sides. But what saved us was our Noble Says Levi-Strauss: "In its old sense, the verb bri- Purpose. Whatever side people were on, they coler..was always used with reference to some all shared a common set of values. Those val- extraneous movement: a ball rebounding, a ues are core to us and never change; they dog straying, or a horse swerving from its frame most of our important decisions. Our direct course to avoid an obstacle." strategy and our mission may change, but our Bricolage in the modern sense can be de- values never do." fined as a kind of inventiveness, an ability to HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW . MAY 2002 PAGE &improvise a solution to a problem without people who used safes and set the locks. He proper or obvious tools or materials. Brico- cracked many of the safes at Los Alamos, for fears are always tinkering-building radios instance, because he guessed that theoretical from household effects or fixing their own physicists would not set the locks with ran- cars. They make the most of what they have, dom code numbers they might forget but putting objects to unfamiliar uses. In the would instead use a sequence with mathemat concentration camps, for example, resilient ical significance. It turned out that the three inmates knew to pocket pieces of string or safes containing all the secrets to the atomic wire whenever they found them. The string bomb were set to the same mathematical con- or wire might later become useful-to fix a stant, e, whose first six digits are 2.71828. pair of shoes, perhaps, which in freezing con- Resilient organizations are stuffed with bri- ditions might make the difference between coleurs, though not all of them, of course, are life and death. Richard Feynmans. Indeed, companies that When situations unravel, bricoleurs muddle survive regard improvisation as a core skill. through, imagining possibilities where others Consider UPS, which empowers its drivers to are confounded. I have two friends, whom I'll do whatever it takes to deliver packages on call Paul Shields and Mike Andrews, who were time. Says CEO Eskew: "We tell our employees roommates throughout their college years. To to get the job done. If that means they need no one's surprise, when they graduated, they to improvise, they improvise. Otherwise we set up a business together, selling educational just couldn't do what we do every day. Just materials to schools, businesses, and consult- think what can go wrong: a busted traffic ing firms. At first, the company was a great light, a flat tire, a bridge washed out. If a success, making both founders paper million- snowstorm hits Louisville tonight, a group of aires. But the recession of the early 1990s hit people will sit together and discuss how to the company hard, and many core clients fell handle the problem. Nobody tells them to do away. At the same time, Paul experienced a that. They come together because it's our tra- bitter divorce and a depression that made it dition to do so." impossible for him to work. Mike offered to That tradition meant that the company was buy Paul out but was instead slapped with a delivering parcels in southeast Florida just lawsuit claiming that Mike was trying to steal one day after Hurricane Andrew devastated the business. At this point, a less resilient per- the region in 1992, causing billions of dollars son might have just walked away from the in damage. Many people were living in their mess. Not Mike. As the case wound through cars because their homes had been destroyed, the courts, he kept the company going any yet UPS drivers and managers sorted pack- way he could-constantly morphing the busi- ages at a diversion site and made deliveries ness until he found a model that worked: even to those who were stranded in their cars. going into joint ventures to sell English- It was largely UPS's improvisational skills that language training materials to Russian and enabled it to keep functioning after the cata- Chinese companies. Later, he branched off strophic hit. And the fact that the company into publishing newsletters for clients. At one continued on gave others a sense of purpose point, he was even writing video scripts for or meaning amid the chaos. his competitors. Thanks to all this bricolage, Improvisation of the sort practiced by UPS, by the time the lawsuit was settled in his fa- however, is a far cry from unbridled creativity. vor, Mike had an entirely different, and much Indeed, much like the military, UPS lives on more solid, business than the one he had rules and regulations. As Eskew says: "Drivers started with. always put their keys in the same place. They Bricolage can be practiced on a higher level close the doors the same way. They wear their as well. Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 uniforms the same way. We are a company of Nobel Prize in physics, exemplified what I precision." He believes that although they like to think of as intellectual bricolage. Out may seem stifling, UPS's rules were what of pure curiosity, Feynman made himself an allowed the company to bounce back imme- expert on cracking safes, not only looking at diately after Hurricane Andrew, for they en- the mechanics of safecracking but also cob- abled people to focus on the one or two fixes bling together psychological insights about they needed to make in order to keep going USINESS REVIEW . MAY 2002 PAGE 7How Resilience Works . HBR AT LARGE Eskew's opinion is echoed by Karl E. Weick, They shrug off their survival stories and very a professor of organizational behavior at the often assign them to luck. University of Michigan Business School in Obviously, luck does have a lot to do with Ann Arbor and one of the most respected surviving. It was luck that Morgan Stanley thinkers on organizational psychology. "There was situated in the south tower and could put is good evidence that when people are put its preparedness training to work. But being under pressure, they regress to their most lucky is not the same as being resilient. Resil- habituated ways of responding," Weick has ience is a reflex, a way of facing and under- written. "What we do not expect under life- standing the world, that is deeply etched into threatening pressure is creativity." In other a person's mind and soul. Resilient people words, the rules and regulations that make and companies face reality with staunchness, some companies appear less creative may ac- make meaning of hardship instead of crying tually make them more resilient in times of out in despair, and improvise solutions from real turbulence. thin air. Others do not. This is the nature of 1 . resilience, and we will never completely un- Claus Schmidt, the newsman I mentioned ear- derstand it. lier, died about five years ago, but I'm not sure I could have interviewed him about his own 1. See, e.g., Karl E. Weick, "The Collapse of resilience even if he were alive. It would have Sense-making in Organizations: The Mam felt strange, I think, to ask him, "Claus, did you Gulch Disaster," Administrative Science Quar- really face down reality? Did you make mean- terly, December 1993- ing out of your hardships? Did you improvise your recovery after each professional and per- Reprint RO2058 sonal disaster?" He may not have been able to To order, see the next page answer. In my experience, resilient people or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500 don't often describe themselves that way. or go to www.hbr.org