Organizational Resilience in the Covid Era

Photo by Tomáš Malík from Pexels

Walking my dog on a light-filled recent Southern California spring morning, I got a phone call from a trusted friend, weeping. His mother had just suffered a severe stroke, he told me over speakerphone from his car, halfway into a desperate multi-state journey to be with her. He needed me to get his sister a Covid-19 test kit, to allow her to see their mother in what appeared to be her final days.

Test kits were scarce, but over the next three days, I went from telling my friend yes to no and back to yes. Yes! I can send his sister a Covid-19 test. I found myself suddenly riding an unforeseen — perhaps unforeseeable — rollercoaster of emotions. I wanted to be of service to my friend’s family in their hour of need. And yet I felt unprepared to function effectively in a world under siege from a pandemic.

Days later, while my friend’s sister was expecting to receive the testing kit, I prepared myself instead to call her with the news that she would need to throw it away. It was incompatible with the specific kind of testing protocols that I had access to.

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

I run a group of companies, including a consulting firm called SidePorch, that help ethos-driven organizations match their actions to their missions, to create positive impact in the world. One of our past clients, a cancer diagnostics lab, had converted its operations to provide Covid-19 testing for essential workforce communities. We helped this company transition its operations and connect with new distribution and philanthropic networks.

We knew how to help organizations grow and adapt. But this pandemic has created a whole new set of rules and challenges. Interconnected communities are struggling to respond to emerging risks in an unfamiliar and changing environment.

As I agonized over calling my friend’s sister to deliver the bad news, I imagined her grave disappointment and anger, and how I, in my attempts to relieve the stress wrenching this family, might actually add to it.

Here I was, in unfamiliar territory, the founder of companies that help organizations find their center of gravity, needing now to find my own bearings.

The Importance of the 80-percent Rule

I reached out to my friend and colleague, Coleman Ruiz. Coleman had a long military career working in complex environments with American special operations forces and now works with organizations around the world to maximize their effectiveness.

Coleman shared a recent story about a doctor who, early in the Covid outbreak, told his hospital that he wasn’t prepared to work through a pandemic. “Call me when things get back to normal,” the doctor had said, “and I’ll come back to work.” After a pause, hospital executives thanked the doctor for self-selecting out of an environment where he was unable to perform.

Thereafter, the hospital made a priority of supporting its teams who remained on the job, working on the front lines of a pandemic with insufficient information and resources.

Coleman’s point: Every organization now needs to ask itself several hard questions about how it will support its people in these challenging conditions. How do they build resilient teams that can function effectively with all the new and evolving protocols that the new normal workplace will require?

Coleman also recommended organizations implement the 80% rule: When you find yourself operating beyond 80% of your capacity — however you define it — let your teammates know, and take a pause. It’s the only way organizations, and the teams they rely on, will be able to function effectively amid the massive uncertainty caused by this pandemic.

At my company, our teams have begun each day checking in with one another, sharing a percentage that reflects how we’re doing at that particular moment. As a result, we now have a new, shared vocabulary that requires self-reflection and trust that encourages the team to take an active interest in each of its members. Our organization operates more effectively in this challenging environment, and we’ve incorporated additional techniques outlined in this excellent piece by our colleagues at the Liminal Collective.

A Surprise Ending

Back to that dreaded phone call to my friend’s sister: with the wisdom and support Coleman gave me, I managed to dial her number, ready for whatever came. The call went nothing like I had imagined. She took the news with grace and compassion and immediately asked how she could help spread news about the work underway with the testing company.

My dog and I walked home slowly. It was clear that I was well above my own 80% threshold.

Three weeks later, as I finish writing this reflection, I received a text from my friend’s sister: “mom is battling and making steps forward.”

We would all do well to follow her lead.