When the Lights Go Out, Community Switches On: Building Resilient Organisations

When the Lights Go Out, Community Switches On: Building Resilient Organisations

Yesterday, a major power cut swept across Portugal and Spain.

But in our neighbourhood, something else switched on: a network of support. Neighbours quickly organised:

• 💧 Who had water?
• 💬 Who needed help?

At Kholo, it reminded us of a deeper truth: when systems falter, people step forward.

What Blackouts Teach Us About Resilience

We saw this impulse during COVID-19, and we’ll see it again. Trust, communication, and collaboration are the real infrastructure we rely on.

Otto Scharmer, in Leading from the Emerging Future, shared a striking survey:

• 69% of people would personally invest to reduce climate change.
• Yet most believed they were in the minority.

The barrier isn’t willingness — it’s awareness. Movements become powerful when they become conscious of themselves.

Trust, Communication, and Collaboration as Infrastructure

In many ways, yesterday’s blackout was a fire alarm for the future.

Just as forests sustain themselves through mycelium networks, described in Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, human systems also survive through invisible networks of support. The health of one depends on the health of all.

When the lights go out, we don’t first turn to governments or corporations. We turn to each other.

Systems Thinking and the Hidden Life of Communities

This shift points to a larger transformation:

• ✅ From extraction to regeneration
• ✅ From control to reciprocity
• ✅ From isolated individuals to resilient communities

Systems thinking shows us that resilience isn’t about speed or control — it’s about interconnectedness, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

Kholo’s Approach: Building Organisational Resilience

At Kholo, our work in Lisbon, London, and globally focuses on helping organisations build this capacity before the alarm bells ring. We design leadership development and cultural systems that:

• Cultivate trust as a foundation.
• Encourage reciprocity in teams and systems.
• Foster regenerative leadership for long-term resilience.

This is how organisations prepare for the unexpected — by investing in invisible networks that sustain them when external systems falter.

Conclusion: Preparing Before the Alarm Rings

The lights going out is a reminder: the future belongs to organisations that can mobilise trust and resilience in real time.

At Kholo, we help leaders design cultures that thrive under disruption, rooted in community resilience and systems thinking. Book a call with Kholo.

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