Business Resilience

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of your current job and lose sight of the big picture, but with a typical career spanning fifty years or more, you do so at your own peril. It's up to you to chart your own course to professional success. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the 10 most important ones to help you develop yourself, make the right career moves, navigate inevitable detours and disruptions, and turn your professional dreams into reality.

Adversity can often catch you by surprise and leave you struggling with what to do next. What if you could confront any adversity, from the biggest challenges - the loss of your job, divorce, health issues, bankruptcy - to normal daily challenges - a late flight, a disappointing phone call, a missed promotion, a bad day - and not just survive it, but thrive afterwards? Some people move through adversity, and others fall underneath it. Learn how you can be counted among those who will overcome.

Each one of us is offered opportunities to choose between surviving and thriving, managing risk and enhancing risk, opening and closing, giving and receiving, living a balance between solitude and community. We can choose to enlarge our sense of things when pain and fear make us small. We can choose to delight in the never-ending practice of course-correcting and tuning as we go. Falling Down and Getting Up introduces listeners to their own gifts and wisdom, helping them explore the perennial practices and choice-points we all face in life.

As a leader, you have work that is complex, full of ups and downs. Your ability to be resilient - to pick yourself up after setbacks and keep on going no matter the challenges - is critical not only to successful leadership but also to fostering teams, generating collaboration, and igniting your organization. In this breakthrough book, veteran consultants Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell show that Appreciative Inquiry can be an invaluable tool to build that resilience.

The future of work swept in sooner than expected, accelerated by COVID-19, creating an urgent need for new maps, new mindsets, new strategies - and most importantly, a trusted guide to take us on this journey. That guide is Jeff Schwartz. A founding partner of Deloitte Consulting's Future of Work practice, Schwartz brings clarity, humor, wisdom, and practical advice to the future of work, a topic surrounded by misinformation, fear, and confusion.

Learn powerful, science-based techniques to boost focus, drive, and energy hour-by-hour throughout the day - every day. As leadership consultants and executive trainers, Bonnie St. John and Allen P. Haines have heard the same complaints from clients for years; periodic burnout, lack of focus, and low energy. So they dug into the latest research on neuroscience, psychology, and physiology looking for big answers. Instead they found small answers; proof that small adjustments in daily routines, can fight the forces that sap our energy and store focus and drive.

Do you want to live an inspired life of sparkling adventure and achieve goals you never thought possible? Get started this morning! Coffee Self-Talk introduces an accessible, powerful routine to pair with your morning coffee so you can start every day with positivity and energy. This easy daily ritual only takes five minutes and starts with positive, uplifting thoughts to reframe the way you talk and think about yourself. By priming your brain for happiness, success, and self-love, Coffee Self-Talk helps you take control of your life.

Ed Beltran, the CEO of a powerhouse leadership communication company, believes the antidote to stressed-out workplaces starts with conversation. Beltran has developed a science-based model to reduce stress and help people build what he calls fierce resilience. By leveraging the power of conversations, individuals discover their unique stressors, master skills to neutralize stressors, and build unwavering resilience that elevates their emotional well-being.

In 2012, on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, an improvised explosive device left Dan Crenshaw's right eye destroyed and his left blinded. Only through the careful hand of his surgeons, and what doctors called a miracle, did Crenshaw's left eye recover partial vision. And yet, he persevered, completing two more deployments. Why? There are certain stories we tell ourselves about the hardships we face—we can become paralyzed by adversity or we can adapt and overcome. We can be fragile or we can find our fortitude. Crenshaw delivers a set of lessons to help you do just that.

What type of leadership is needed in a moment that demands adaptive change? Tod Bolsinger, author of Canoeing the Mountains, is uniquely positioned to explore the qualities of adaptive leadership in contexts ranging from churches to nonprofit organizations. He deftly examines both the external challenges we face and the internal resistance that holds us back. When reflection and relationships are combined into a life of deliberate practice, leaders become both stronger and more flexible.

It's official. For the first time, the World Health Organization has classified burnout as a health problem. Renowned motivational speaker Eileen McDargh proposes that to tackle it, we must learn to break out of energy-draining thoughts and behaviors. Resilience, she argues, is strictly a matter of energy management - by better managing your energy, you can both build resiliency and overcome burnout. McDargh guides the listener through the process of identifying energy drains and implementing strategies for handling them, whatever phase of life you are in.

Management teams and boards are facing disruption on all sides, from morphing customer preferences to the COVID pandemic to climate change. At the same time they are floundering in strategy confusion with too many concepts and not enough clarity. In this book, strategy expert and regular Harvard Business Review author Graham Kenny releases managers and directors from their strategy haze. His simple and effective framework allows managers to navigate the current maze of ideas and approaches and maximize their competitive advantage.

Katrina. Haiti. BP. Fukushima. The Great Recession. Those are just a few of the catastrophic disruptions the world has endured in recent years. As we try to respond to such crises, key questions arise: What causes one system to break under great stress and another to rebound? How much change can a complex system absorb while still retaining its purpose and function? What characteristics make it adaptive to change? Provocative and eye-opening, Resilience sheds light on the nature of change.

Become tough as nails. Bounce back from hurt. Be Calm. Bend without ever breaking. We all get knocked down, but everyone has the choice to get back up or not. How will your life your life? The art of emotional self-defense. The Science of Emotional Resilience is the rare book that understands where you've been, the obstacles you've overcome, and what you need to make sure you are in full control of your life at all times. This is a stunningly detailed and insightful guide into our emotions, our triggers, and why we act against our own interests so frequently.

Embracing Schizophrenia is the story of Samantha Mercanti’s experience with schizophrenia. The story is light and positive, but at the same time shows the difficulties Samantha experienced, and continues to experience, in her recovery and her life. Embracing Schizophrenia is a story of struggle, strength, resilience, and hope that opens a window onto mental illness and illuminates it, so we can all understand just a little bit better.

How do you know if you're going through a setback? And once you realize you're in one, how do you work through it? Some of the world's most prominent leaders attribute their setbacks to the reason they found success. Their lowest moments paved the way for their creative rebirth. Through the four phases of The Setback Cycle—Establish, Embrace, Explore, and Emerge—Amy Shoenthal guides listeners on how to make sense of their experiences, gain clarity on what comes next, and move confidently into future endeavors.

Bolstered with research, exercises, self-assessments, and real-life stories from people with natural burnout immu­nity and those who’ve cultivated it, Burnout Immunity teaches workers how to positively cope with stress and to enjoy healthier and happier relationships with work.

In 21 Days to Resilience, Dr. Zelana Montminy gives you a practical, concrete toolkit to develop your capacity to recover quickly. Each day of her powerful program, Dr. Montmimy introduces a key concept necessary to improve resiliency and enhance well-being - such as courage, focus, positivity, self-care, and social support - then provides three quick skills to accomplish. Throughout the book she teaches you lifelong skills you can continue to practice and return to as needed to keep your resiliency muscles strong.

"Backpack to Rucksack - Insight into Leadership and Resilience by Military Experts" is a powerful book that offers practical and actionable guidance on leadership and resilience from the perspective of military experts. Drawing on his extensive knowledge and experiences, the author provides valuable insights and relatable anecdotes that make the concepts accessible and applicable to a wide range of listeners.

Have you ever dreaded Sunday night, got a pit in your stomach on the way to work, or had your heartbeat speed up at the sound of your boss’s voice? If so, you may have had anxiety at work. In this empathetic and wise guide, executive coaches and gurus of gratitude Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton explore the causes of workplace stress and anxiety and the management practices that have proven successful in reducing tension and cultivating calm.