All organizations seek to be resilient, yet some may not have clarity toward what resilience means for them.  Having a solid resilience-focused plan or playbook will help your organization get there. A resilience playbook should include guidance on leadership support, team structure, technical knowledge, behavioral competencies, and common objectives for your teams.

Common team objectives are important to help ensure success in a team-based and resilience-focused approach.

Follow required steps prior to aligning common objectives.

1. Document your roadmap.

The first step:  document your roadmap to be operationally resilient.  Three important roadmap components include the development of plans, continuous improvement of them, and a focus on the right leadership behaviors to gain consensus and alignment.  A “toolbox” complements your roadmap by referencing essential documents and the approach to follow to keep operational teams focused on achieving results.  The documents needed to fill the toolbox include a resilience policy, organizational charter, and a long-term project plan with short-term and immediate objectives. A balanced scorecard is another tool that includes key performance indicators along with tracking time commitments for critical tasks is essential.

 2. Align your teams.

 The second step, which will help you better your odds of success in attaining resilience:  focus on aligning your teams so they are well synched and operating toward a common mission.  Conduct an organizational assessment to confirm how structuring operationally resilient roles provides immediate benefits.  Be sure to select team roles and functions based on your organization’s structure.  Have a process where you can successfully engage teams and manage handoffs between them.  In addition, form a method of governance with well-engaged leaders including all of the organization’s critical support and operational functions, and prepare a documented charter.

Structure global, regional, tactical, and facility business continuity teams to maximize strategic value.  Identify crisis management team roles with suggested responsibilities. Your team’s structure depends on the types of incidents, business continuity events and crises likely to be encountered.  Following an incident, survey and obtain feedback from participants involved in business continuity events and crises helps to identify gaps and promote continuous improvement.  Keep your teams consistently ready to engage through annual training and ongoing communications so your teams are aware of how they can best support the organization in a unified way.

 3. Deploy a resilient process.

 The final step:  implement a resilient deployment process to execute strategic activities through an agreed-upon project schedule with a clear understanding of how every item ties back to the organization’s mission.  Develop objectives that reference activities that are included in the scorecard, help reduce risk and support prompt recovery when significant business interruption events occur.

Objectives that are aligned across all business units are part of an annual operating plan. The current year’s objectives are included in an annual scorecard with quantitative and qualitative components.  Conduct a risk assessment, followed by a business impact analysis to identify critical business processes.  A scalable method of creating business continuity plans based on the size and criticality of facilities is beneficial.  Maintain progress through successfully managed resilient deployment meetings.  Every facility should have a basic documented plan, with additions and supplements to the plan based on an organization’s size, industry and geographic footprint.

 Overcome obstacles with objectives that are well-defined, communicated and understood.

Common objectives should be followed by all your operational team members and aligned with short- and long-term planning.

1. Establish well-defined objectives.

Establish your team’s common objectives to overcome potential obstacles:

• Are the objectives specific and measurable?
• Do all objectives help drive expected results?
• Have you received feedback from the participants on the objectives they are to accomplish throughout the year through your organization’s performance management system?
• Are objectives tied to your organization’s talent management process, including compensation, performance, development, and succession planning?
• Is every objective tracked and measured?
• Are all objectives clearly defined to avoid confusion and lack of clarity?
• Do objectives avoid creating conflict with other teams?
• Is there commitment to completing the objectives?
• Do objectives reference behavioral competencies to promote better outcomes?
• Is there a reasonable time period provided to complete the objectives?
• Do you have leadership support to complete the objectives?

2. Convert commitment into objectives.

Convert your organization’s commitment to resilience into objectives all your team members can support.  Ensure the objectives are tied back to your mission statement in a way that will expand, focus, or promote growth of sales, new markets, research, revenues and profit margins.

3. Write SMART objectives.

Write the objectives so that they provide clear direction, promote quick decision making, and progress can easily be reviewed, and make them SMART:

• SPECIFIC objectives are focused on actions and outcomes containing verbs.  They are clearly understood, precise and detailed and not vague.
• MEASURABLE objectives include specific actions and metrics that can be tracked and are tied to results in measurable intervals.
• ATTAINABLE objectives are achievable with a reasonable amount of work, in a reasonable amount of time.
• RELEVANT objectives will allow your team’s personal goals to achieve the organization’s business goals.
• TIME BOUND objectives identify a sense of urgency to have them completed and are not open-ended.

4. Align objectives to team members.

Every one of your team members should have a well-defined and aligned objective that is tied to your overall team’s objective and supports the organization’s mission.

Team members who are full-time equivalents (FTE’s) in support of operational resilience can have more detailed objectives.  Those who have part-time equivalent (PTE) roles can have a single objective supported by their direct managers.

Consider identifying alternate team members to support the primary ones to ensure their functional roles are always represented during events and crises.  Primary and alternate team members for every role that’s important enough to help support operational resilience should have this common objective.

Team members with global and business unit level of responsibility can have objectives to deploy resilience strategies in a common way across the organization.  They should work closely with their direct managers who should approve the time and resource commitments needed to meet the objectives.

Establish strategic objectives with appropriate metrics for various roles.

1. Provide strategic business continuity for the region (s) throughout the year.

• Percent of calendar-based activities completed (surveys, training, testing, etc.).
• Percent of incidents, events and crises effectively managed from start to conclusion.
• Percent of management requests addressed in support of operational resilience.

2. Complete all activities to improve maturity of the region (s) throughout the year.

• Participate in 100 percent of activities related to team training and effectiveness.
• Support the objective management process for 100 percent of critical team members.
• Compliance with all maturity targets set for the region (s) by end of the year.

3. Lead all planning and response activities related to your top operational risks throughout the year.

• Percent of facilities continually engaged and ready to implement resilience strategies throughout the region(s).
• Percent of teams using business continuity plans and playbooks to effectively address risks.

4. Effective use of all business continuity-related tools throughout the year.

• Percent of events and crises where teams used business continuity tools.
• Percent of events and crises documented with business continuity tools.

5. Specific strategic objectives with appropriate metrics are needed for facility and tactical functions:

Active and engaged contributor and team representative in support of operational resilience throughout the year.

• Obtain management approval of participation in all activities throughout the year.
• Participate in team training, meetings, and programs throughout the year.
• 100 percent completion of all surveys, assignments and feedback requested throughout the year.
• 100 percent participation in all events and crises representing your function throughout the year.

Meet regularly and update progress.

Conduct meetings with your teams at set intervals to ensure they are well prepared to participate in the required activities to attain success.  A quarterly review with your teams where all participants are expected to attend and present status updates is an effective way to keep them all engaged.

I like to have all team members join in and have a few minutes to update the rest of the team on their A, B, Cs of operational resilience the past quarter:

A: ACTIVITES their teams were involved in supporting operational resilience.

B: BEST PRACTICES they can highlight the past quarter.

C: CRISES they effectively managed in the past quarter.

Coming to a meeting, knowing you have something to present and that you will learn from others, is an effective influence management technique to consider.

Follow your organization’s human resources talent management process to provide input on your team’s performance. Providing a mid-year and end-of-year manager and matrix manager feedback shows the importance and organizational support for aligned objectives.

A Maturity Model provides value in determining the progress being made on operational resilience objectives and the capabilities for continuous improvement.  This can be done through a maturity model survey with survey results providing forward-looking objectives for the coming year.

In summary…

Resilient individuals and resilient organizations have a few things in common, including being most effective when they face challenges.  They maintain control when others may not and behave in a way that makes others want to join them in their journey.  Common objectives executed well provide a well synched team focus on overcoming obstacles.

It takes a bit of work to document your roadmap, align your teams, have a resilient deployment process, and create closely aligned objectives.  The result is very beneficial for your organization, after all “The only thing harder than being resilient is explaining why you aren’t!”

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Michael Janko’s book, “Excellence in Operational Resilience: How to Lead, Follow and Guide the Way,” was published in March and was an Amazon #1 best-selling new release.

Providing essential guidance to thrive in a complex environment, this book showcases tools to take the leadership role in the process of building resilience in any organization in a timely, effective, and practical way for today’s risks and tomorrow’s challenges.