Readiness constitutes the sixth management principle leading to safe behavior. At employee level, readiness refers to the ability to respond adequately to risks and challenges from the environment while maintaining the capacity to recover from exertion.
Human survival depends on a delicate balance between conserving energy and being ready for action when necessary. This balance is dynamic and influenced by immediate circumstances. By shaping the conditions under which people work, management plays a crucial role. This article explores what readiness actually is and how it can be managed at the organizational level.
What is readiness?
We experience an increase in readiness the moment we need to take action. This is felt physically as a slight tensing of the muscles—commonly described as “being tightly strung with stress.” Muscle tension requires additional fuel and therefore increased blood flow, particularly to the arms and legs.
To support this, the body raises blood pressure and heart rate, and enriches the blood with additional oxygen and sugars. Brain cells literally communicate faster to respond more quickly to changing conditions. The senses sharpen. Hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol play a key role in fine-tuning roughly a hundred physiological balances involved in this state.
Why not maintain a constant high level of readiness?
One might wonder why humans do not operate permanently at such a heightened level of readiness. After all, alertness increases and delayed reactions to danger become less likely.
The answer has several dimensions. The most obvious is energy cost. High readiness requires at least 30% more energy. Humans, like organizations, cannot survive long if they constantly operate with such elevated costs just to perform better occasionally.
In addition, the brain has distinct systems for action and rest. The resting system—often referred to as the default mode network—becomes active only when external stimuli are limited and a certain level of calm is present. This system enables us to process experiences, store important information, learn, monitor ourselves, and plan ahead. The resting system is therefore just as essential for safe functioning as the action system.
The resting system in management teams
The functioning—or absence—of the resting system is most clearly visible in management team meetings that involve many complex topics under sustained time pressure. When this becomes structural, decisions tend to be insufficiently thought through. Organizations then find themselves revisiting decisions later, realizing that critical information was not adequately considered at the time.
Juni Daalmans