Page 60 - The Resilient Organization

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No CEO starts with a clean slate. It is tempting to think about how to
achieve great performance and, in the process, ignore the legacy of past per-
formance. However, this legacy may strongly resist change, depriving the
organization of resilience. Hence managing the consequences of past per-
formance is the first step toward building a more resilient organization.
In the recent, industry-shaping debate, President Barack Obama said
that if the United States were starting from a clean slate, a “single-payer”
health-care system would be preferable to the other systems proposed. “If I
were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving
toward a single-payer system could very well make sense,” Obama said,
according to National Public Radio, June 22, 2009. “The only problem is
that we’re not starting from scratch.” Indeed, the U.S. health-care system is
trapped in a web of powerful economic interests. Such a radical shift from
the existing employer-paid insurance system to a government-paid insur-
ance system would be arguably too disruptive for the current $2.2 trillion
health-care industry.
Similarly, a much smaller change effort, the cash-for-clunkers program,
included a clause that cars built before 1984 (the real clunkers) were not
eligible. Why? Because of the interests of the automobile lobbies, which
include car collectors and parts resellers.
Thus reasonable programs with laudable aims are reshaped by vested
interests, and there is no clean break from the past because “you cannot
change an entire health-care industry in one legislation” or there are lobby-
ists that those successful in the past can afford to employ. (The automobile
aftermarket business is huge.) Future success, on the other hand, has few
lobby groups. Who would pay for it? Hopefully our elected representatives
will stand for the possibility of success in the future for those not yet insti-
tutionalized as parties of note. It is the American dream too!

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