Summary
Crises often come not as single shocks but as emergent, transitory events set in uncertain, shifting environments. Adventure racing takes place in such a context—with competitors beset by technological breakdowns, unpredictable conditions, and persistent stress. A recent study into adventure racing reveals how resilience, rather than being an inert capability, is a dynamic, ongoing process. Interrelationships and distributed sensemaking is key to success, as team members work together to absorb strain and adapt to changing circumstances. Resilience can be viewed not only as an operational capacity, but as social behaviors enacted in response to evolving events. Resilience is not a static capability. It too is emergent and transitory. It is not simply about bouncing back to a past status quo but rather an ongoing process of struggling well. Resilient race teams actively engaged in and shaped their situation and then in the next moment did it again—a process relevant to broader organizational contexts.
In competitive adventure racing, teams of two to four navigate through a wilderness using only compasses and maps, often for several days and hundreds of miles, without a route plan or specified sleep or meal stops, transitioning between biking, trekking, and paddling. This is a sport entirely focused on the ability to navigate through adversity, uncertainty, shocks, and crises—with a winning aim in mind—and to do it as a team. It is thus an ideal context in which to observe how successful and less successful team dynamics operate. A new study by Michelle A. Barton, Associate Professor of Practice, and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, provides new insight to the microprocesses that underlie team and ultimately organizational resilience.
Resilience in uncertainty
Post-pandemic, and given the prevalence of disruption and uncertainty in today’s business environment, it is clearer than ever that the ability to weather everyday shocks, navigate through adversity, and overcome crises, is crucial to maintaining organizational performance.
In this new reality, previous studies of organizational resilience which have typically focused on recovery from specific one-off crises and catastrophic events isolated in time and space, appear to have a limited application. In today’s fast-changing business context, where adversity, disruption, stress, and crises can be persistent and evolving, and conditions impermanent, organizations need a more adaptive approach. They need the ability to adjust and reshape to align with the needs of the moment, rather than bouncing back to a previous state—absorption rather than recovery may be the only option.
Previous studies have also tended to focus on organizational structure, whereas the need to adapt and reshape strongly suggests that organizing needs to be privileged over organization. Fundamental to organizing must then be a focus on interrelationships and how the various team members relate with each other and with the changing environment.
Resilience reimagined
The idea that resilience in organizations is more impermanent, enacted, and relational than has previously been suggested, is exemplified amongst the adventure racing teams. Addressing persistent adversity and sporadic, acute shocks, teams developed and maintained resilience through processes of interrelating, with racers working together to mutually adjust roles and engagement, and coordinating through distributed sensemaking. As the reality of their situation altered from one moment to the next, these processes allowed them to absorb problems as they arose and to shape the up-coming context. These patterns of interrelating, established in response to adversity, fueled cycles of resilience or vulnerability and the capability to manage strain over the long term.
Periods when strain and adversity were overcome by the racing teams were characterized by high levels of communication and connection. This in turn bred an increased collective sense of ownership for acute shocks, and encouraged collective strategies for resilience. Furthermore, in coming together to reframe adverse situations, teams reinforced their communicating and connecting behaviors, and in working to resolve adversity they drew closer together, reaffirming the value of the collective unit to its members.
Conversely, cycles of vulnerability were marked by silence and separation, typically when an individual team member was left to deal with a specific shock in isolation, such as sickness or a bike crash. Silence and separation undermined engagement and collective sensemaking and reduced teams’ capacity for restructuring—leaving them less resilient and more vulnerable.
Resilience is enacted, not possessed
Studying the actions and interactions of adventure racers clearly shows resilience as a dynamic process. Resilience is a quality that the teams enact, as opposed to a static capability they intrinsically have. Consequently, resilience is an impermanent state which will change and invariably strengthen or weaken according not just to the shifting situation, but also to the relational dynamics and choices team members make in each moment—such as whether they move towards or away from one another in the face of adversity.
The racing teams that operated adaptive processes were those that worked as a collective to build and deploy their capabilities, interacting with the transitory environment in a way that positively adjusted and maintained functioning before, during, and following adversity.
The dynamics of mitigating strain involved communicating to co‐construct sense of the situation and one another’s capacity to perform within it. As knowledge built within the team it enabled racers to reconfigure roles accordingly—to adjust their actions to keep the team on track despite adverse events and conditions,and encouraging further insights in the process.
As demonstrated in the case of adventure racing resilience in organizations can be fleeting, occurring in conjunction with a specific, transitory context and relational patterns that are specialized for a moment in time. Thus, resilience is not something a team or organization has, but rather something the various actors involved do—and do together as a collective unit.
Access the full research paper hear: Barton, M. A., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2023). Enacting resilience: Adventure racing as a microcosm of resilience organizing. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12459
