How Businesses Can Brace For Catastrophe

On Sept. 19, 2017, a severe earthquake struck Mexico City, killing 370, injuring thousands and destroying scores of buildings. For a short time, the city ground to a halt as rescue efforts took priority over normal commerce. But then something curious happened: some businesses were able to return to work relatively quickly, while others lagged or even failed to recover and disappeared. The 2017 earthquake provided a natural laboratory to study a crucial but often elusive business capacity: organizational resilience. Two years after the earthquake, I met with a group of leaders whose businesses survived the quake to understand what set them apart. I found that their answers fit nicely with a leading theory about organizational resilience: that it falls into successive stages: anticipation, coping, and adaptation. Read more at Harvard Business Review.