Human Factors in System Resilience: Beyond Technical Solutions

Robert Hall, Guest speaker, Ginom webinar, October 9th, 2025

Focus on the human side of resilience. Technology strengthens systems, but human judgment, adaptability, and coordination often determine whether we collapse or recover. Through compelling case studies, discover how trust, communication, and collective action shape system resilience.

Resilience has helped the human race to survive and prosper over millennia. It has allowed us to overcome global challenges of epic proportions. We are not unique, however, as the natural world has been practising resilience for much longer: that’s evolution.

All the systems and technologies in the world, no matter how resilient themselves, will not necessarily result in resilient citizens, communities and countries. 

Resilience is largely about how people behave and react to challenging circumstances and how they muster others and resources around them to enable recovery or sustainability.

So, let’s make human resilience personal. Those of you in the mature ages of 55 to 60 may be delighted to hear that recent research in Australia has revealed that the overall functioning of the human brain reaches its peak between those ages.

The data suggest that alongside the accumulation of knowledge and experience, resilience traits such as the determination to see things through, the ability to weigh competing principles, and the capacity to stay calm under stress all increase across adulthood before levelling off in later life. Life’s experience also seems to make us less sentimental about lost causes. 

So, the late 50s emerge as the sweet spot, the point when hard-won wisdom compensates for dwindling speed. It’s not to say those younger or even older cannot be resilient, far from it, but some aspects of maturity do have advantages. 

Whatever one’s age, it is about having a resilience mindset, namely a set of beliefs and values that shape how we make sense of the world and see ourselves. It’s that mental and physical capacity to be robust, to endure, to persevere, to be optimistic, and be flexible. 

It’s to grasp the moment and change for the better, now and in the future.  As Winston Churchill one said, ‘to improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often’. That mindset is shaped by values, attitudes, culture, responsibilities and experiences which, in turn, shape the way we incorporate new knowledge and how we respond to a wide range of situations.

Resilience is not a universal or common characteristic. Some people are more resilient than others – for a host of reasons – to different challenges (you may be resilient to physical hardship but poor at dealing with emotions around a family death) just as some countries are more resilient than others to disasters (take Dhaka over Dallas to flooding).  It also develops over time. Resilience is a journey without a destination.

By way of a definition resilience is about the ability to anticipate, absorb and adapt to challenges, and therefore has both proactive as well as reactive components. It involves preparation as well as recovery and transformation. It requires foresight, hindsight and insight to respond and cope with new circumstances.

These three – the three As – characteristics are essential for the journey and for having the right mindset.

Anticipate – This means looking ahead but also by looking backwards. The ancient philosophers or Greek Stoics promoted our ability to learn from the past and apply it to the future. They believed knowledge remains our greatest virtue but we should not to dwell on thoughts and dangers we can’t shape or influence. By focusing on resilience rather than risk, it is possible to lessen our fears of uncertainty and change.  

Another mindset is to deepen our mental capacity for better social engagements so as to achieve greater good for the wider society. There is much talk recently of the whole of society resilience, tapping into our collective strengths and experiences in the face of, during and after major challenges. 

Absorb – This means having the wherewithal to manage and recover. But that is dependent on our capacity to prioritise sustainable goals over short-term goals. If those goals are based around strong cultural and ethical values, they can be transformative with lasting impact. 

Trust and truth can bind people together in a strong social contract, while social cohesion can facilitate resilience in the round. This in turn relies on good communication and a degree of courage to step out of our traditional comfort zones while avoiding polarisation and partisanship.

Adapt – This means coping with change. Change can be an engine of progress but requires agility and adaptiveness to operate in partnership if resilience rather than resistance is to shine through.

Agility and adaptiveness can work in tandem but require nurturing through the use of techniques such as empowerment, delegation, redundancy, reorganisation and, of course, the deployment of technology. All this means we must constantly undergo upskilling to readjust our mindset for new challenges and opportunities.

Resilience itself need nurturing as it is not necessarily an inherent state (nature v nurture). We all have a role to play in balancing our own mindset with the demand of society. It is more than having spare batteries in the house should the lights fail: it is about reinventing our whole approach and adapting our behaviours to meet the next change that is coming down the road, lights or no lights.

Robert is a consultant and writer on resilience. He has written three books on the topic – Building Resilient Futures, The Resilience Mindset and Nature’s Resilience – as well as two resilience-oriented novels. These books have arisen from many years working in both the public and private sectors on risk, security and resilience. Latterly, he cofounded and was the executive director of Resilience First Ltd, a business consultancy, and has worked part-time for the UK’s National Preparedness Commission. He spent 17 years in the British Army.