Disaster Recovery Journal Fall 2025

5 Steps to Build Strong, Resilient Teams That Deliver Results

By BOB KLEMME

L et’s get straight to the point: the value of a strong team cannot be understated. Bad teams are destruc tive. Good teams create success. When assessing the strategic resilience of organizations, we find strong teams are often an indicator of positive results and long-term success, even in the face of adversity. When venture capital firms decide whether to invest millions to help a small company grow, the strength of the team is of primary importance.

Imagine someone is observing one of your team meetings. Perhaps they are an expert in organizational behavior, or a professional poker player, or your mother. This person could probably identify whether you have a successful team or if it’s headed for disaster. In this article I propose five steps to improve the results and resilience of a team. It’s not science, just years of obser vation and experience from many different teams. Some successful and some not.

1. Align on the Mission During a crisis the mission is clear: return the operation to normal ASAP. Before the crisis, I have found the mis sion may not be as clear. We will not explore how to define your team’s mission, that’s up to you. In brief, Simon Sinek might call it the “why” – simply defining why the team is here in the first place. When teams understand and align on their mission, it keeps everyone’s eyes

12 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | FALL 2025