Author: Robert Hall
ISBN No: 9781035812622 (paperback)
Review date: 09/05/2024
No of pages: 214
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Publisher URL:
https://www.austinmacauley.com/author/hall-robert
Year of publication: 30/04/2023
Brief:
price
£16.99
I haven’t seen Robert Hall for a while, writes Mark Rowe, and now I have a reason why – he’s been writing a book, Building Resilient Futures.
As an organiser of the business body Resilience First, Robert has played his part in the debate around resilience in a broad sense – resilience not only for a business or public concern, but personal and indeed any organisational resilience; that we might define as ‘bounce-back-ability’, the ability to take the rough and tumble of life, acts of God and man-made disasters, and not only survive, but thrive.
Partly because I have attended some of those discussions and featured them in Professional Security Magazine, in-person and online during the covid pandemic, I must admit I turned straight to one of the later chapters, titled ‘benchmarking and standards; how do we measure success’. Because there for me is the holy grail for security and indeed any service, let alone resilience – how to quantify what is qualitative? Fire safety is a matter of physics – either a building is on fire or it is not, its cladding is fire-retardant or not. You may boast that you or your organisation are secure, or resilient, and you may have the right kit, and even run test exercises, but until the day that something happens – or rather, it often happens out of hours, when key people are inconveniently on holiday or back home asleep – who’s to say that you and your organisation can respond to the test?
In a word, metrics. It’s a challenge, Robert admits. As he correctly identifies, it matters because for one thing investors would like to know, to have confidence that places and companies they’re investing in will meet the more or less inevitable floods, fires, acts of terror or power or cyber outages. Hence benchmarking, which may pit one internal department against another (and how comparable are HR, say, with legal and ops?). At least, as Robert sets out, you can compare yourself with the highly resilient, such as air traffic control and nuclear submarines. Robert lists four things, that seem useful to me: ‘the need to demonstrate progress towards becoming more resilient; the need for leading, as opposed to lagging, signs of resilience; the need to link improvements in organisational resilience with competitiveness; and the need to demonstrate a business case for resilience investments’. That brings to mind to me the SABRE certification scheme, a security risk management standard for buildings (new and existing), infrastructure, and managed space.
What may sound like one step down from benchmarking are ‘indicators’ that can provide organisations, communities or cities with at least some inkling of their resilience strengths and weaknesses, before a crisis, let’s say for example a city’s resilience against climate change (has it enough reservoirs in case of drought, readiness in case of wild fires on the outskirts). Robert goes on to ‘maturity models’, a ‘technique that relies on a series of developmental stages to show improvement’. The informed reader may be asking by now, where’s the British or international standard? And Robert duly brings up BS 65000, actually an Organizational resilience code of practice, besides ISO 31000 covering risk, among others on business continuity and resilience. Far from resilience lacking ways to measure itself, Robert writes of ‘a plethora of standards’. Robert goes on to detail resilience assurance work by the financial sector, which he says has been at the forefront, ‘largely because of the dangers of making costly mistakes in the market’.
Robert sums up this chapter, if I may quote him in full: “Indicators are valuable tools when trying to assess resilience, but they can be subjective depending on the criteria chosen. Maturity models are helpful but give only a loose indication of the direction and pace of travel. Standards offer a valuable framework, but as they are not scalable, they can lead to a false picture of widely different organisations. Assurance approaches offer regulators ways of identifying what an organisation has, does and can do without resorting to standards. There is no perfect method of quantifying quality.”
Robert then winds up, and notes that resilience ‘defines the human spirit’, whether it’s the planet getting through the covid pandemic, or terrorist or organised crime or politically extreme groups keeping going despite all that’s thrown at them by civilised society. In a ‘turbulent and volatile world’, resilience becomes yet more relevant. Robert throws into the mix ‘enabling technologies’ such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing; will they make humanity more resilient, such as by identifying risks, or will tech create new, even existential risks?
Robert points out that the effects of resilience or a lack of it are felt by us all, and each of us can do something to make ourselves and our communities more resilient; yet it’s above all for ‘politicians and policymakers to argue the case for spending on resilience for long-term gain, never an easy sell, especially when money is tight, but that is what true leadership is about’.
Robert has pulled together a great deal of thinking and writing on resilience into 200 pages. I note that Robert is writing a further book, Natural Resilience, and a historical novel; so I might not see him for a while longer.
As for the excellent value for money this book represents, we can be sure that advisory firms such as EY and Deloitte are offering consultancy on resilience (and sustainability, bearing in mind that if water, energy and other resources are running short or not readily available, that has a bearing on how resilient we are). If Robert’s comprehensive and authoritative book takes you two hours to read, that works out at £8.50 an hour, and those firms’ hourly rates are certainly more than that.
About the author
Robert Hall is a consultant on resilience. He was the Executive Director (2018-21) and then Director of Strategy (2021-22) at Resilience First Ltd, which he helped to cofound. He also served as the Research and Policy Co-ordinator for the National Preparedness Commission (2021-22). He left both positions in May 2022. Robert has authored over 50 articles in a variety of publications on strategic risk, security and resilience issues, as well as around 200 news articles and papers on the Resilience First website.
