Learn from a multi-faceted HR executive with extensive experience in leading organizational transformation, designing innovative people management strategies within global enterprises.
By Brenan German, Founder and President of Bright Talent
with Lamya Alaoui, an operations executive leading organizational transformation
A few months ago I read a great article on LinkedIn titled, The Essence of Organizational Resilience. It was written by Lamya Alaoui, an accomplished leader in organizational transformation and resilience whom I’d had the good fortune to meet earlier last year.
That article really resonated with me, as we share many similar views when it comes to HR and people practices. And it was the catalyst for my inviting Lamya to join us for one of our Rapid Change Management webinars, which we recorded last summer (you can watch the webinar here). There were s many valuable insights that came from that lively discussion, I wanted to share some of our Q&A with you here.
Lamya Alaoui is a multifaceted executive with extensive experience leading organizational transformation, designing and rolling out innovative strategies for people management within global enterprises across different sectors, including defense, technology, media, spanning four continents. She specializes in launching and scaling new ventures, from early stages to more than 3,000 employees, and in leading organizational integrations after mergers and acquisitions. She holds a BS in economics from the Université Hassan il Mohamedia in Morocco.
BG: In your article, one paragraph that really stood out for me was where you described organizational resilience as being more than just surviving – it’s about flourishing in the face of adversity, transforming challenges into opportunities and carving out a path to enduring success.
I loved that concept, Lamya, because it's one thing to look at that statement as a personal journey, but it’s a very different situation when we're trying to move an organization toward resilience. I’d like to talk about this in the context of how we build leadership and strategy through culture, process and people practices.
Could you give us – being HR leaders – two points we can use to get the CEO's attention to help us build our business case for organizational resilience? Where would you start?
LA: I think the first thing to recognize is that when we're talking to a CEO, like all CEOs, it's about the bottom line first. So I would start with the financial impact and risk mitigation.
Usually what I would recommend doing is starting with data-driven evidence and present case studies. There are plenty of resources everywhere and data showing how organizations that are agile or resilient have been able to weather economic downturns, even natural disasters and market disruptions, better than their competitors or counterparts.
Next it’s highlighting the potential financial losses from not having resilience strategies already in place. (I think some companies learned that the hard way during COVID.) This means emphasizing the CEO's responsibility – not only to the shareholders, but to stakeholders – to protect the company's assets and make sure that there is long term viability. So that's the first aspect – talking to the CEO to capture their attention when we're talking about establishing resilient strategies for the company.
BG: Yes, this is not just an HR or people function strategy or initiative, this is an overarching organizational initiative. And, sadly, if it's deemed just a people initiative, it doesn't automatically click for the C-suite as to the financial impact. So, we have to spell it out for them, or at least we have to show them that we’ll start with compliance and finance, financial impact, because that'll get their attention.
You mentioned COVID. I think when you think of COVID, everybody was going through rapid change at that moment, and it was accepted and adopted probably quicker than anything ever before. Just because of the compliance aspect, the actual health risks, we were putting everything in place.
We won't always have that opportunity, so we have to set that up to really get the CEO's attention, and I think you've just said it so eloquently – make it about compliance and finance first, so they can connect the dots, then we can move into aspects of people and culture. So that's my next question.
When we think about people and culture, how do we embed that in the cultural DNA?
LA: There are two points that are still on the leadership side that are often tied to the people and culture, and this is when it comes to innovation and agility. Resilient organizations usually depend on their leadership to make informed and agile decisions in the face of uncertainty, and that may ensure that there is a swift response when there are opportunities, but also when there are challenges.
On the people side, the expectation is, “we want people who are resilient.” But a culture that is resilient is not only its people, it's also the processes built around it. It's basic, but people often forget it is communication and engagement when it comes to the people part – having transparent communication and also involving the employees by engaging the employees in resilience-building initiatives, such as scenario planning or problem-solving workshops to create a sense of ownership and collective responsibility. This is how a company becomes resilient as a whole.
It’s also having training, mentorship and coaching – establishing programs that will focus on building resilience with senior leaders mentoring junior employees on how to develop a resilient mindset and approach based on what they have experienced. They have been through challenges, but often leaders keep those things to themselves instead of sharing their experiences and building the culture around them. Let's have shared experiences, even maybe develop training programs around it.
And the last part is what I call the cultural narratives. It is very important, for the people and culture aspect, to promote stories of resilience within the organization and celebrate how the individuals and the teams have overcome challenges, shared experiences and contributed to the organization’s strength and adaptability recognition and reward systems.
You have some amazing companies that will do it on a regular basis, but for some companies it doesn't come naturally. It is really important to highlight how resilience contributes to success.
BG: I love that idea. And we talked about people and culture and I also mentioned process and practice. So, we melded that in that statement.
Let’s speak more about agility and adaptability. I love the idea how you said it’s through stories. These could be from potential mentors, and again, we're having to start at the top with the CEO, the CFO, the COO, who are the C-suite. They have to buy into this idea that to become a resilient organization, it's not simply asking our people to be tougher or to suck it up or saying this is the way it is, right? It is something that has to come together collectively and collaboratively. We have to all agree we're going to be agile and we're going to adapt and that's just part of who we are.
So, when we talk about process and practice – and this cuts across all organizations and all types of organizations, all types of industries – how do we fit that into our operations? How do we say, okay, we're going to be agile, we're going to adapt? This is kind of training for communication, but how do we build this? How do we really start shaping that or framing that change in our practice?
LA: When we are talking about organizational resilience, it should be really integrated in day-to-day operations across the board, all departments across the whole company.
It starts with the indicators for prioritizing during the discovery. Because you have to do contingency planning, but to do contingency planning, you have to do a comprehensive risk assessment. So I will get a little bit on the technical side here.
Usually, when we’re trying to implement resilient strategies, we will do what we call a “vulnerability risk exposure.” This is where we're looking at historical data and critical processes and assets to identify which processes, systems and assets are critical to the organization's operations. They are also the most vulnerable to disruption.
We also analyze all the past incidents and how did we respond to them. And what was the impact we had from there? Was most of the impact on stakeholders? From there, again, we’re looking at the financial implications, which is the cost of disruption and cost benefit analysis. Everything – like compliance requirements, especially if the companies are now operating in different geographic zones and have employees – comes with its own set of challenges.
And finally, we're looking at the strategic alignment. What are the business goals and what is the leadership support? It is really important to gauge the level of support and commitment from executive leadership for the various initiatives. All of this, if there is not support and even sponsorship from the leadership, would be very, very difficult to do.
There is an easy way to do this – we can use a weight and formula for prioritization. I would really start by doing a comprehensive assessment and looking at where we are and what we need to do and building from that.
BG: Thank you for that. So we're moving from how to build and where to start. I love that, because when we talk about agility and adaptation, then we start getting into the tools we already know. I think what you were just describing there, starts with discovery, just like any change management project.
It starts with discovery, but the discovery is going to be around a combination of things, like continuity planning. What happens if there's disruption again, like COVID or something happens to the executive team?
And then there’s the risk mitigation part of that. Then we're probably adding in environmental health and safety as it relates to people focus, and then also getting into some competitive landscapes as well, in terms of risk mitigation.
So, when starting, you're building that plan with the executive team – where to start looking and then once that’s done, the plan starts formulating. As we work through discovery, the prioritization will bubble up, as you're saying. But I think the challenge there, even when you're weighting it, is when we have multiple priorities and almost feeling like they all have equal weight, because people are as equally important as operation disruption, right?
How do we help the priorities come into sequence so it's easier to attack, because you don't want to do a shotgun approach. You don't want to try to solve everything at once. So how do we go about weighting those priorities you had mentioned, then maybe give us an example of how you would go about weighting.
LA: Usually, what I've done is I look at the impact. And this is where I give the most weight. Usually, I would put about 40% on the impact to prioritize things, then the probability of certain things happening will be 30% percent. From there I move to cost and resources, and roughly it's 20%. And finally, it's time to implement again.
I'm an ops person. The priority will always be what would have the most impact and ensure that the organization or the company is ready? That would always be the priority. I know that it doesn't come naturally to many people just because we're always thinking we're in fire response.
Most of the time, a company that is resilient will have a crisis response team. And then the rest of the teams will be building the infrastructure, so that we don't need a crisis response team down the road. And to do that, it's looking at what will have the most impact when the crisis happens. But usually those are initiatives that will take time to implement.
And I also have peers that will alternate the initiatives. They will have, you know, long term ones, short term ones, and they'll alternate in that way to make sure that they're prepared. But you have to find what works for your company, for the people you are working with. How resilient are they? Is there a full commitment from the leadership?
I honestly always just look at the impact, the probability, costs and resources, and the time to implement.
BG: As you know, I lived through COVID in this business supporting clients. And as I look back at the different responses during COVID, I like what you're saying. If you're a manufacturing facility and your people have to be on site, that was a far greater impact on that type of organization than if you were fully a professional services organization and people are working in the office.
So, I don't want to say any of this was easy. However, using this as an example, as you're saying to weight this, moving to remote work for a professional services company was probably a bit easier and less impactful than working through all of the regulations and requirements that manufacturing staff had to work through. So I feel like that's probably a good case study to look at where those weightings might be a little different and companies might have responded differently in terms of the resilience.
And that's really just around crisis management. I think we're also seeing this every day, right? There are competitive issues. There are market changes. There are regulation changes. So this isn't just about crisis. This is about adapting as business evolves and the market evolves.
I think, like with any change management project, we're also building a cross functional team. You said you'd gather your peers. So when we say cross functional, what, exactly, are we talking about?
We started this discussion by saying this is not an HR initiative or a people function initiative, this is an organizational initiative, so it should not be seen as just an HR initiative and HR is leading it. Rather, HR is the champion, right? The people leader is the champion of this, and they're going to help drive and cobble together the cross functional team.
I don't want to belabor this, but cross functional means every leader within the business should have an involvement. Am I right in saying that?
LA: Yes, so any change management initiative – and especially one such as building resilient strategies or implementing resilient strategies – requires a cross functional team.
And again, you have to communicate a very clear vision and purpose of the cross functional team that is in charge. What are the goals? What are the impacts and the value for the company?
Pick your role models. You need leadership endorsement from senior leaders to lend credibility and importance to the project. And also it's really crucial to involve respected and influential leaders who can champion the initiative and inspire others.
The other aspect of cross functional teams, and sometimes this is why they are facing challenges or they fail, is because the roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined. So the lanes tend to kind of get mixed up between the actual role within the organization and the role within the cross functional team. So always set clear expectations and leverage the unique skills of the team members to make sure that they're staying within their lane, but their expertise is leveraged the way it's supposed to be.
And finally, create a collaborative environment in communication and provide support and resources, like any other change management project. It does require a lot of resources, and if you're not providing them, it will be very difficult to get anywhere.
BG: I agree. In terms of that change management piece, the collaboration is critical.
Lamya, I want to thank you so much for your time and really creating the inspiration by publishing your article. I'd recommend to anyone reading this conversation, go and read the article, because I think you'll get additional insights that are valuable.
Lamya: Thank you, Brenan.