Page 17 - The Resilient Organization

4 Part One: Why Resilience Now?

FALLEN EAGLES

1. Planning is sufficient preparation for the future. Reality:
Unknowable, extreme events make relying on plans questionable.
2. Good strategy is key to success. Reality: Most companies linger in
a transition phase when the old strategy no longer works and the
new one is yet to be fully implemented.
3. People behave “rationally.” Reality: It is easy and commonplace to
imitate other people’s behavior or act out some fashionable idea
rather than exercise independent judgment.
4. Copying “best practices” cannot be argued against. Reality:
Untraditional competitors in emerging countries are right now
redefining price/cost ratios and innovating new business models.
Copying them is not possible—homegrown management innova-
tion is needed.
5. It is best to wait until change is absolutely necessary to save cost.
Reality: Such lack of rehearsal makes it extremely risky to accom-
plish change when the crisis is upon us.
6. The art of management is about executing against preestablished
goals and optimizing performance. Reality: Discovering new aspira-
tions and lifting performance horizons are current management pri-
orities that require the cultivation of organization-wide innovation.
7. Public interest can rely on organizational and/or individual self-
interest and the imperative of self-preservation. Reality: Public
interest is, once again, for elected officials to guard. Such service
will require highly qualified and altruistic people to govern. Citizens
will need to become more active and informed too. High-quality
journalism will be essential.
8. We are masters of our ideas. Reality: Ideas are powerful. They
affect people’s behavior, and they can now travel easily across places
and people. We tend to believe that we own and use our ideas to our
freely chosen ends, but actually, ideas tend to own us and manipu-
late our behavior toward their idea-driven ends. In the past decade,
one such highly possessive idea has been the efficient market
hypothesis. 1