Page 65 - The Resilient Organization

52 Part Two: Step 1. Managing the Consequences of Past Performance

SUMMARY OF THE TOXIC CONSEQUENCES OF PAST
PERFORMANCE
High Success
• Overconfidence (or insecurity compensation)
• Hubris in one’s competence
• Undue attribution of merit to self
• Structural hardening, rigidity
• Immoderation and escalation of success formula
• Lost capacity for experimentation
• Attentive complacency
Mediocre Performance
• Conventional thinking
• Best people leaving
• Lowered aspirations
• Similarly unambitious reference groups
• Interests groups forming to perpetuate status quo
• Control of resources by those who benefit from mediocrity
Very Low Performance
• Failure traps
• Threat-rigidity response
• Extreme risk taking in case survival is threatened
• Inward-focused attention
• No one cares. Everyone has given up.

WHY GOOD COMPANIES GO BAD
• Strategic frames create blinders.
• Processes cause routines.
• Relationships become shackles.
• Values become dogmas. (Sull, 1999: 45)

The very characteristics that made a company highly successful now
work against it, making it unable to adapt to new market demands