A word: Resilience.

How many times in the last 90 days have you heard someone say the word, “resilience.” When I hear it in a commercial on TV, a podcast I love, even on the radio, I cringe. Yes, I cringe. And, yes, you are right, I do talk about resilience for a living.

Why do I cringe? Because resilience is a term that has lost its meaning. I don’t mean that you can’t find it in Webster’s Dictionary. I mean that resilience is actually a very abstract term that people are using to describe a phenomenon they can’t explain, so, in response, they use “resilience” for just about anything that is hard to fathom or difficult to understand.

I’m not one to let concepts go undefined, especially ones I’ve been researching for almost a decade. Over the last 60 days, I’ve asked entrepreneurs and business leaders about resilience. What do they know about it? What does it make them think about? How do they experience it?

Two definitions.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to share two of the definitions I’ve noticed most frequently. The first definition describes resilience as a personal awakening, a newfound ability to finally see oneself holistically. No longer is one private or public, feminine or masculine, leader or follower, but all of these things. At once. The global pandemic created a situation in which one was forced to see their own reflection (Exhibit A: Zoom). Resilience was described as a process of discovery, finding what was there all along. It was beautiful to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders talk about resilience in this way.

“Resilience was described as a process of discovery, finding what was there all along. It was beautiful to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders talk about resilience in this way.”

The second group defined resilience as a type of pseudo-promise land. Resilience was a destination; a place that they hadn’t yet arrived and were still not sure how to get there. One entrepreneur described it through the imagery of a wayward river, ravaging the land, making its own riverbed. She placed herself on a raft fighting the river, crashing into the rocks on either side. She couldn’t gain control of the raft, or the river. She was being thrown from one side to the next as the rapids rushed forward to a destination unknown. It was heartbreaking to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders talk about their experiences this way.

“She was being thrown from one side to the next as the rapids rushed forward to a destination unknown. It was heartbreaking to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders talk about their experiences this way.”

Is one right and another wrong? No. They are both describing resilience. I can sense your skepticism. How can that be? How can both peace and hardship point to resilience?

The calm and the chaos, the beautiful and the brutal, these are all resilience because resilience is, in fact, not a place, but a journey. Or, as I like to say, resilience is the road, not the destination. A continuous, never-ending, winding, breathtaking, devastating path.

Have I lost you yet?

Let’s consider the last 90 days. Maybe your business experienced hardship. Maybe it experienced calm. Maybe it had growth. Maybe it was stressful. Maybe you had to furlough, or layoff, or fire staff. Maybe it was the best 90 days your business has ever seen. Maybe it was also the most terrible.

Resilience and decision-making.

Resilience as the road means that the decisions you made and continue to make—Which way to turn, which mountain to climb, what vehicle to use, should you walk, hike, or bike? What should you carry with you?— all of these choices change your experience on the road. And the decisions you made in your own business, and more importantly, how you came to make that decision, changed your business. The resulting outcomes had a direct impact on what happened next.

Resilience, at its core, is about decision-making. And those decisions determine the life of your business (aka the distance of the road). In order to make quality “resilient” decisions for your organization, you have to process information effectively so that your decisions are easy to make when you come to a fork in the road or when the path is unclear. And, hey, did you know there are maps you can buy? (email us.)

Seeking a road marker, dear Reader? Consider these two questions:

1. How do you define “good” decisions?

2. How do you define “good” decision-making?

Your answers will help you get started.