Page 114 - The Resilient Organization

Resourceful, Robust, and Adaptive 101

We have only one head though—perhaps that is because otherwise,
no one would know who is in charge. (And therein may lie one of our
weaknesses—no team decision making to challenge our potential biases).
Our brains are highly redundant, though, and generally capable of compen-
sating for a lost functionality.

CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF REDUNDANCY
• Repetitive
• Spare or twin
– Replacement
– Substitute
– Mirroring
• Instantly reproducible or copyable
• Obvious
• Unnecessary
• Ambiguous (with multiple meanings or interpretations)

The lack of redundancy exposes a potential vulnerability: Liddel Hart
(1968: 159) criticizes the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war for failing to
take advantage of the Russian war effort’s being “entirely dependent on a
single line of railway—the Trans-Siberian.” No redundancy there, though
the enemy failed to exploit it.
The resource redundancy approach can of course be criticized for its
slack, and therefore less-than-optimal, efficiency. Idle resources (or invest-
ments just in case), though not productive in the traditional sense, can be
interpreted as having value, as security blankets or stepping stones. The
value is in their ability to mitigate and buffer against risk, provided that
they can be called upon as needed. This assumes certain stability in the case
of a security option or flexibility (or liquidity) (see the vignette sidebar
“Real-Options Reasoning for Resilience”). Reserves may, of course, also act
as a deterrent: your being able to afford a good lawyer may reduce your
opponent’s willingness to sue, or a country’s having a large army capable of
defense may decrease its enemy’s eagerness to attack.