Resilience: Withstand the Hardship
One of the more
important characteristics of a successful business is resilience. Without
resilience, a business that suffers any setback is far more vulnerable to
hardship or even complete collapse. In fact, failures frequently precede
success in many people's efforts in business or otherwise. Just look at
some of these examples.
Walt Disney was fired once because he "lacked imagination and had no
good ideas." A recording company executive told the Beatles that he
just didn't like their sound. Stories like this are accounts of people with
the persistence to avoid defeatism in the face of difficulty. They had the
needed resilience to keep going, to strive for future successes instead of
wallowing in failure.
Another lesser known example is that of Thomas Carlisle, who took more than
a year to compile his monumental history of the French Revolution. A
housekeeper mistook it for trash and out it went. Carlisle dedicated
himself to re-creating it, and with three more years of hard work, recalled
it from memory and produced the replacement--a monumental history produced
with an equally monumental reserve of resilience in the face of defeat.
One of the most familiar such stories in the business world is that of
Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. Frankl survived Nazi Germany's,
Auschwitz to become a leading proponent of a humanistic therapy approach
for motivating more productive decision making. In Frankl's best-selling
book, "Man’s Search for Meaning," he details the critical moment
when he realized the objective of creating this revolutionizing form of
therapy.
Frankl had fallen into self-pity over his concentration camp existence. He
now saw his life as meaningless and trivial, but he suddenly realized that
to survive, he would have to overcome this feeling. He would have to find
some overarching purpose. He would have to have the resilience to form some
positive objectives in the face of so much negativity. Frankl envisioned
himself delivering a lecture after the war on the subject of the psychology
surrounding a concentration camp. From this simple beginning sprang his
entire school of thought, which he called, "Meaning Therapy,"
with a mission of recognizing and creating significance in the lives of
others. With resilience, Frankl turned around not only his life, but the
lives of countless others. Today, employee resilience training is common in
the work place.
Frankl's resilience was born of an ability to find meaning against all odds
in a horribly negative situation. Finding meaning is just one of the characteristics
of those with high resilience, though. Another, perhaps strangely, is an
acceptance of reality - for only from a realistic acceptance of a
challenging situation can an adequate response be generated to fix it.
The investment bank, Morgan Stanley, had its offices in the World Trade
center before that awful day on September 11, 2001. As it happens, Morgan
Stanley had a diligent concern for preparedness, which included preparing
for possible disasters requiring building evacuation. When the first tower
was hit, it took them exactly one minute to begin the evacuation of their
offices in the second tower. Only because of their preparedness and
training were almost all of the company's 2,700 employees saved when the
second plane struck its target fifteen minutes later.
Their realistic approach, accepting the reality of the existing threat of
terrorism, brought about the preparedness plan that allowed Morgan Stanley
to remain in business. This resilience in the face of potential disaster
saved them when the danger became a reality.
Some people and some businesses break under pressure. Others succeed due to
their resilience in overcoming adversity or planning for its resolution.
Which one are you?
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