The best books to navigate operational resilience, what it means and why it's important

More than any other writer, Flynn explained the value and need for resilient critical infrastructure. He distinguished between foreseeable and unforeseeable threats, and made clear that we can reduce the risk and impact of both. Since 9/11, anything purporting to discuss protection/security and resilience was skewed to terrrorism, giving scant consideration to more fundamental changes in our world. Flynn brought this broader perspective to the fore, and I would like to believe he influenced political and academic thinking. I fear he was the Cassandra to the business community, who are only now starting to understand the risks they face. I made this book core reading for all the infrastructure courses I teach. It is clear, simple, and sets each concept in context with an unambiguous call to action.

There are some excellent books on risk like Bernstein's Against the Gods. The majority are insipid reads and over-simplistic. This little book stands out for its simple, clear, condensed overview of risk in theory and practice. It doesn't try to simplify to the point of complicating the subject; it presents the inherent complexities without drama. I made it required reading for my risk & resilience students and employees. It offers a sense of how risk changes with interpretation and how the perception can itself influence the occurrence and impact. If this idea of risk perceptions and how it influences decision-making strikes a chord with you, you might wish to explore more of Baruch Fischhoff's work—it is utterly fascinating and will forever change how you buy vehicle insurance and salmon.

Judith Rodin is one of the more extraordinary influencers of resilience thought and practice. As President of the Rockefeller Foundation, she oversaw the 100 Resilient Cities initiative. The initiative may not have been as "sticky" as many hoped, but the lessons from this experience continue to inform and spur action in cities worldwide. This book gives us a sense of her thinking and vision in driving the initiative. It does not hold all the answers, and many take issue with her perspective. Nonetheless, it is a must-read for anyone thinking about protecting our cities. In an ideal world, I'd love to see Judith Rodin write the next book with Juliette Kayyem, former US Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, drawing on all that we've experienced over the last tumultuous decade. 

Not easy reading, it may well slide down your "must read" list. However, resilience is an ecological concept. C.S. Holling, co-author of Panarky, coined the term resilience in a 1973 ecological science paper. The practical application of resilience, specifically operational resilience, and its relationship to adaptation and protection, has evolved greatly over the last 20 years. Nonetheless, Panarchy gets to the raw ingredients of these multi-domain ideas. It remains an invaluable touchstone for those exploring nature-based solutions as tools of protection and resilience planning for disaster risk reduction. It is a fascinating reminder of how quickly the world and emerging practices can change, yet the fundamental concepts endure. It reminds me of the essential value of books and how reading and internalizing an argument is so much more intellectually nourishing than today's tendency to graze information.

I struggled to keep my recommended reading list to five books. The subject is much bigger than the succession of oversimplified opinions discussing resilience, adaptation, and protection. I was greatly influenced by Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction and the need to ensure that we can adapt and protect ourselves even as we seek to mitigate the changes we have caused in our world. I am also a pragmatist at heart and often find myself referring to Hirschman's essays—he was probably the arch-pragmatist among economists.

He spoke of the dangers of trying to fit the world into a model, as opposed to building a model to understand the world. Few heed his advice, typically measuring the world about us by the familiar tools at our disposal. In the process, we become blind to the actual changes in our context and fixate on the immediate issues and returns. In effect, we lose sight of our future and whether we/our business can survive all the changes we face. We make matters worse by decoupling key performance indicators and key risk indicators, focusing compensation metrics on what has past rather than our preparedness for what is approaching. We become willfully blind to what is happening around us and reward ourselves for this ignorance. It is the entire antithesis of Drucker's first fiduciary responsibility of directors to protect against loss.

These concepts and many more are expertly woven into the vignettes through Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. I'm not typically a modern fiction reader, generally preferring fiction that has stood the test of time (I'm a poor judge of fiction quality). This book is different on so many levels—it is one of the most thought-provoking reads in a long while. Besides, how can one not be drawn in when the central character's favourite album is Kind of Blue.