Linking Resilience to Culture and Training: Embedding Preparedness in the Organization’s DNA

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a seven-part “Cross-Departmental Resilience Framework” series by Scott Balentine of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. The series offers a practical roadmap for embedding resilience across governance, operations, and culture.

Previous articles in this series:

• https://drj.com/journal_main/resilience-council-governance-framework/
• https://drj.com/journal_main/defining-important-business-services-resilience/
• https://drj.com/journal_main/creating-dual-playbooks-business-continuity/
• /https://drj.com/journal_main/cross-functional-exercises-organizational-resilience/
• /https://drj.com/journal_main/modernizing-collaboration-tools-resilience/

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Plans and tools may fail if the people implementing them lack the training, confidence, or cultural mandate to act decisively. Research consistently shows culture—the shared values and behaviors of an organization—determines whether resilience initiatives succeed. Employees must see resilience not as a compliance exercise but as part of their identity and daily work.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reinforces this by embedding “govern” as a central function, requiring resilience to be aligned with organizational priorities and integrated across workforce roles. Similarly, NIST SP 800-34 emphasizes training and awareness to ensure staff know their responsibilities during contingency events. By linking resilience to culture and training, leaders can embed preparedness into the organizational DNA, ensuring resilience is not a project with an expiration date but a sustained, lived value.

Why Culture Matters for Resilience

Beyond Policies and Checklists

Even the most sophisticated continuity plan will fail if employees ignore it, fail to understand it, or lack confidence in execution. Culture ensures resilience is lived, not laminated. When resilience becomes part of an organization’s ethos, employees internalize preparedness as “the way we work” rather than “what compliance requires.”

Shared Accountability

When resilience is embedded in culture, departments no longer perceive preparedness as the responsibility of IT, compliance, or risk management alone. Instead, operations, HR, supply chain, legal, and communications all view resilience as a shared responsibility. This shift reduces silos and ensures coordinated responses during crises.

Faster, Smarter Response

Cultural alignment empowers employees to act within shared values and guidelines, reducing hesitation during high-pressure situations. Staff trained to value resilience make faster, better decisions because they understand the organizational priorities underpinning their choices.

Case Studies

Toyota: Embedding Resilience in Lean Culture

Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, Toyota realized its just-in-time supply chain, while efficient, was highly fragile. The company responded by embedding resilience into its lean production culture. Toyota mapped multi-tier suppliers, standardized parts across models, and incorporated continuity considerations into engineering and procurement processes. This shift ensured resilience was not an isolated project but integrated into how Toyota designed, sourced, and produced vehicles. By embedding resilience into its core lean philosophy, Toyota reinforced continuity as a cultural norm, not an afterthought.

Cleveland Clinic: Patient-First Culture During COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cleveland Clinic’s “patient first” culture guided every decision. Leadership aligned clinical, operational, IT, and communications responses under a unified “One-Team” model. By framing resilience through the lens of patient care, the organization ensured staff did not view resilience measures as bureaucratic exercises but as essential to fulfilling their mission. Employees were trained not only in downtime procedures and technical contingencies but also in aligning every action with the value of patient safety. This cultural alignment enabled Cleveland Clinic to preserve quality of care under extreme pressure.

Kaiser Permanente: Training for Wildfire Evacuations

Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa faced wildfire threats in 2017 and 2019, successfully evacuating hospitals on both occasions. These evacuations succeeded because resilience was embedded into the organization’s culture through repeated training exercises. Staff had rehearsed evacuation protocols, transport coordination, and communication workflows. By normalizing resilience training as part of daily practice, Kaiser Permanente avoided chaos and achieved coordinated, safe outcomes during real crises.

Framework Foundations

ISO 22301

The ISO 22301:2019 standard requires organizations to deliver training and awareness programs, ensuring staff at all levels have the competence to fulfill continuity roles. It also calls for embedding resilience into management systems, ensuring continuity is not siloed but part of the organization’s governance framework.

NIST SP 800-34

NIST’s Contingency Planning Guide emphasizes the importance of training, awareness, and role clarity. Plans alone are insufficient unless employees know their responsibilities, practice them, and understand escalation protocols.

NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0

The CSF 2.0 elevates “govern” as a core function, requiring resilience governance to align with organizational mission and strategy. It also integrates workforce readiness into risk management, emphasizing training and awareness as cultural enablers of resilience.

Actionable Steps to Link Resilience with Culture and Training

Defining a Resilience Vision

The first step in linking resilience with culture and training is to define a resilience vision that aligns with organizational values. A well-crafted vision statement connects continuity and preparedness directly to the mission, making resilience meaningful to employees at every level. For example, Cleveland Clinic articulates its vision as “resilience means protecting patient care under all conditions.” Framing resilience in this way translates abstract concepts into values staff already understand and embrace, ensuring preparedness is seen as part of the organization’s identity rather than a separate initiative.

Embedding Resilience

Embedding resilience into job descriptions and performance reviews provides the next critical foundation. When resilience responsibilities are written into job roles—such as requiring participation in continuity exercises or maintaining familiarity with downtime procedures—it signals preparedness is an expectation for everyone, not just a select few. Tying resilience behaviors to performance evaluations reinforces accountability, ensuring staff and managers alike are recognized for their contributions to organizational readiness.

Tiered Training Programs

Tiered training programs strengthen this foundation by tailoring content to the responsibilities of different groups within the organization. Executives need training focused on decision-making under uncertainty, governance responsibilities, and regulatory obligations. Managers benefit from training on departmental playbooks, escalation protocols, and resource reallocation. Staff require practical instruction on incident response roles, safety procedures, and continuity workflows. This layered approach ensures training is relevant at each level while reinforcing shared expectations and a common framework for response.

Regular Awareness Campaigns

Resilience must also be reinforced through regular awareness campaigns. Newsletters, intranet updates, workshops, and e-learning modules help keep resilience visible beyond annual training cycles. Sharing lessons learned from real incidents, whether internal disruptions or external case studies, makes resilience personal and relevant, reminding employees of its impact on customers, patients, and operations. These campaigns cultivate a culture where preparedness is part of everyday thinking.

Recognition

Recognizing and rewarding resilience behaviors ensures staff see resilience as valued by leadership. Teams that excel in exercises or real-world disruptions should be celebrated publicly, with incentives such as awards, bonuses, or leadership recognition. This positive reinforcement motivates engagement and signals resilience is not only essential for organizational success but also appreciated as part of individual and team contributions.

Active Partnerships

Partnership with human resources and learning and development departments is another vital step. By integrating resilience into onboarding processes, leadership development initiatives, and ongoing professional training, organizations weave preparedness into the employee lifecycle. This integration ensures resilience is seen as a core competency and an opportunity for growth, rather than an optional or peripheral responsibility.

Cultural Adoption

Finally, measuring cultural adoption closes the loop. Organizations should regularly assess how deeply resilience has been absorbed into culture by using surveys to gauge employee awareness and confidence, tracking participation in training and exercises, auditing performance reviews for resilience-related language, and reviewing after-action reports for evidence of cultural alignment. These measurement activities provide tangible indicators of progress and highlight areas that need reinforcement. Over time, they ensure resilience is not only taught but also practiced, lived, and embedded in organizational DNA.

Challenges and Mitigations

A frequent challenge in embedding resilience into culture is cultural resistance. Employees may view resilience efforts as unnecessary or burdensome, especially if they perceive preparedness activities as separate from their daily responsibilities. To overcome this, organizations should frame resilience as protecting what matters most—customers, patients, and employees—while linking it directly to the organization’s core values. By showing how resilience aligns with the mission and safeguards the people they serve, leaders can shift perceptions from “extra work” to meaningful responsibility.

Inconsistent training also poses a barrier. When training varies significantly by department or role, employees develop uneven levels of preparedness, leaving gaps which can compromise response during a crisis. The solution is to standardize training frameworks across the organization while still allowing for customization to reflect departmental contexts. Appointing resilience champions in each function helps ensure comprehensive coverage and consistency, while tailoring content maintains relevance for specific teams.

Leadership apathy is another significant obstacle. If leaders fail to model resilience behaviors, cultural adoption falters, as employees take their cues from those at the top. To address this, executives must be held accountable through board-level reporting and oversight by the resilience council. When leadership demonstrates visible commitment—by participating in exercises, reinforcing preparedness in communications, and prioritizing resilience in decisions—employees are more likely to embrace it as part of the organizational culture.

Finally, organizations often fall prey to short-term focus, prioritizing immediate operational or financial goals at the expense of long-term resilience. This tendency can undermine sustained progress and leave the organization vulnerable to disruption. The most effective mitigation is to embed resilience objectives into strategic plans, budgets, and governance reporting, ensuring they remain part of ongoing priorities. By institutionalizing resilience in planning and oversight processes, organizations balance short-term demands with the long-term necessity of preparedness.

Benefits of Linking Resilience to Culture and Training

One of the most important benefits of linking resilience with culture and training is improved engagement. When employees view resilience as meaningful and mission-driven, rather than as a compliance exercise, they are more motivated to participate actively. This sense of purpose helps staff understand their efforts directly contribute to protecting customers, patients, colleagues, and the organization itself. Engagement grows stronger when resilience is connected to the mission and values people already embrace.

Resilience embedded in culture also fosters stronger collaboration. When accountability is shared across departments, silos begin to break down. Employees in IT, operations, HR, legal, and other functions recognize preparedness is not the responsibility of a single group but a collective effort. This shared ownership encourages cross-departmental cooperation, which is essential for effective coordination during disruptions.

A cultural emphasis on resilience also accelerates recovery. Staff who know their roles and priorities in advance are able to act decisively under pressure. Instead of waiting for instructions or duplicating efforts, they respond with clarity and confidence, reducing downtime and minimizing the impact of crises. Clear expectations, reinforced through training, allow the organization to recover critical services faster and more efficiently.

Another benefit is regulatory readiness. By embedding resilience into training and cultural practices, organizations demonstrate compliance with international standards such as ISO 22301 and frameworks like NIST. Regulators increasingly expect evidence resilience is not just written in plans but practiced across the workforce. Training programs, cultural integration, and documentation from exercises all serve as tangible proof organizations meet these requirements.

Finally, a culture of resilience supports sustained preparedness. Unlike plans or leadership mandates which may shift over time, culture endures. When resilience becomes part of organizational DNA, it continues even when executives change, or documents are updated. This continuity ensures preparedness is not dependent on individuals but is woven into the way the organization operates, creating long-term stability and confidence.

Conclusion

Culture is the invisible architecture of resilience. Policies and tools may guide direction, but without cultural alignment and training, organizations remain vulnerable. Case studies from Toyota, Cleveland Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente show resilience succeeds when embedded into values and daily practice. International frameworks such as ISO 22301, NIST SP 800-34, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 provide structure, but leadership commitment, recognition programs, and integration with HR make resilience sustainable.

By linking resilience to culture and training, organizations transform preparedness from a checklist into a lived identity. Employees no longer ask, “Is this my responsibility?” Instead, they see resilience as who they are and how they operate—ensuring when crises strike, the organization responds with clarity, unity, and purpose.

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The seventh and final article in this series, “Measuring, Reporting, and Improving: Making Resilience Tangible and Accountable,” concludes the cross-departmental resilience framework by focusing on how organizations can transform preparedness from aspiration into measurable performance. It explains how metrics, transparent reporting, and continuous improvement create accountability and drive maturity across all levels of governance. Drawing on ISO 22301, NIST SP 800-34, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, the article provides practical steps for developing key performance indicators, implementing scorecards, and embedding feedback loops. Case studies from Norsk Hydro, the UK Financial Conduct Authority, and Southwest Airlines demonstrate how the presence—or absence—of measurement can define resilience success.