Disaster Recovery Journal Fall 2025

Let’s picture the positive: your strong team is on a mission. They’re working hard, sacrificing, getting stronger, build ing confidence and capability. This looks good, but maybe there’s another competi tor, who is also strong, or scores a lucky shot, or by some fortune wins the day. Even your strongest team can lose. It’s not

really anyone’s fault. The team performed well, prepared well, but was just beaten. Someone had to lose, even in the Super Bowl. A painful reality after all that prepa ration. Even worse, maybe someone on the team screws up and says the wrong thing to a customer. Maybe they show up late

for an important meeting and it’s too late to recover. This is a different way to lose. Is someone at fault? Sure. Discipline, coaching, long talks? All of that. The point here is that teams need to deal with and work through losses, screw ups, and failure. Sports and business are filled with examples of individuals and teams who don’t give up, who come back next year, who persevere, figure it out, and win next time. I believe teams can build this as a skill. I call it “adding margin.” This means taking action to increase the resilience of the team. To add margin, interact with the team in a way that: u Increases the likelihood of success. u Reduces the likelihood of failure. u Recognizes we can’t control everything. u Understands mistakes happen and things break. This often means taking a breath, offering to help a teammate, or giving a teammate some latitude when they need it. These actions are investments into the team’s future success. In business school they taught us the best businesses are those with high gross margins. The reason is that with a high gross margin, the leadership team has plenty of room to screw up and still make a profit. It’s the same concept when building a resilient team. It’s a golden rule for teams: treat others the way you want to be treated. Treat teammates with common sense. Encourage leaders and teammates to give each other latitude, to add margin, so when the unexpected happens, or when some one screws up, the team is motivated to respond quickly and together. Let’s build high performing, resilient teams. v

Bob Klemme is managing director and founder of Trailmark Co., a consulting firm focused on increasing the strategic resilience of organizations. He managed the BC/DR program at Verizon Wireless

and subsequently developed an approach for managing strategic innovation risks for Verizon’s strategy depart ment. Prior to Verizon, Klemme was a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

18 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | FALL 2025