This paper explores an alternative to contemporary organisational resilience research through the ‘temporary adaptive capacity’ concept. Such an approach shows how loosely coupled socio-technical systems can unite under a joint governance structure to increase their combined capacity to protect themselves against a time-limited common threat. This conceptual framework differs from contemporary approaches to organisational resilience by utilising networks of systems, contrary to what has traditionally been an organisational-centric understanding of how to build organisational resilience. The conceptual shift is found in the ability of otherwise unrelated socio-technical systems to combine their resources, management, and governance systems to increase their overall capacity to identify, manage, and recover from what would otherwise be a disastrous event for the individual organisation. The proposition is that such a system maintains the initiative during an event, as it can adapt when norms and practices no longer have agreed outputs. It develops innovative solutions and workarounds using existing organisational resources to achieve its desired output. The socio-technical systems can work independently without compromising the overall network goals and adapt by making changes within the technical and organisational domains. To illustrate the utility of such a network approach, an example from Greenland is where six communities face a possible catastrophic landslide and tsunami event.