Page 50 - The Resilient Organization

Parts More Resilient than the Whole 37

Confrontational or • Presence: Being able to exploit
containment strategies an opportunity that arrives in a flash
(like the martial arts)
• Determination: Not to give in, fight
every advance
* The partner “provides cover” while moving from one strategy position to another.

It is important to make a distinction between strategy and resilience
here: while a strategy may be successful at a point in time (such as market
dominance), resilience is a matter of long term survival (that is, it is a qual-
ity of the organization using the strategy or strategies over time). Divide and
conquer, though initially successful, will likely have harmful consequences
in the long term—witness the consequences of such strategies in the lands
held by the British Empire such as Afghanistan. Thus resilience does not
spring solely from a particular use of strategy, even if it can be tested
through such strategy contests. The argument is therefore asymmetric: the
test and the wellspring of resilience are separate. This partly explains why
many books about excellent companies are humbled by these companies’
failing to outperform in the years to come after the publication.
Therefore, resilience—in the competitive logic—is a matter of strategy and
its consequences, which establish the advantage or disadvantage of being able
to survive the long term and pursue opportunities in the long term. For
instance, a strategy that brings complacency as one of its eventual or
inevitable consequences will eventually fault in resilience: most empires fall.
Thus strategy may contribute to resilience, but it is not its origin or cause.

The First Etiology of Resilience

Strategy Consequences Resilience (or Lack Thereof)

Legitimacy

The second test of resilience relies on a different survival logic: that of insti-
tutional legitimacy. Such legitimacy is a very different justification for