ABSTRACT

Adaptability is the aptitude which individuals, teams, and organizations possess that enables adaptation, and adaptive capacity may be viewed as the amount or level an individual, team, or organization can adapt before safety, performance, quality, and reliability are negatively impacted. Adaptability is a key component of resilience and organizations that are able to develop appropriate levels of adaptive capacity at the individual, team, and organizational level may be able to plan for and react appropriately to changing conditions. Resilience is a way to build options to mitigate risks, plan for potential failure, design recovery options, and to create long-term sustainability. Resilience is a ubiquitous word and generally brings up images of people bouncing back from tragedy, or rebuilding after losses have occurred. By building in resilience, adaptability, and high levels of adaptive capacity at the individual and team level, the organization stands to become stronger as well because the employees and teams are the most critical part of the organization.