Page 70 - The Resilient Organization

Performance Traps 57

While it is difficult, perhaps occasionally impossible, to avoid the dan-
gers of success, all enslavements do suggest ways toward an escape. These
are good remedies, but they are not likely in themselves to create a resilient
organization. Managing past success is but a good first step.

MEDIOCRITY IS HARD TO BEAT

A Japanese Nobel Prize winner once exclaimed, “We are continuously con-
taminated by conventional thinking.” This is the temptation and hazard of
mediocrity—hard-to-escape daily orthodoxy, or a pervasive lack of imagi-
nation and aspiration. This dulling fog lowers performance as our aspira-
tions level off, and we become satisfied with our performance relative to
others with a vested interest in not challenging the status quo. (Conversely,
should you wish to improve, choose another, radically better reference
group!)
In most companies, by this stage, the imaginative and brave people have
already left. Note that a defining sign of mediocrity is its conventionality—
eschewing risk taking and shying away from new ideas (March, 1991).
Here is a test: How many innovators are left in your company from the last
high-profile innovation consulting project? There is little hope for contin-
ued strength of performance unless the company can keep its best people
and ideas from leaving.
Here is the path to the dulling of the senses:

1. Great people leave (usually in frustration).
2. Orthodoxy settles in and grows. Aspirations are lowered. Reference
groups form that do not challenge the orthodoxy.
3. A core group (one or more) forms to perpetuate its ability to benefit
from the organization.
4. Risks are avoided that would jeopardize the core group’s strangle-
hold (see Kleiner, 2003). There are few if any incentives to search for
higher performance.
5. Resources are not allocated based on performance but based on the
(now powerful) core group’s control of the organization (for exam-
ple, Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).