Page 89 - The Resilient Organization

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

PAST PERFORMANCE AS A THREAT TO RESILIENCE

Strategic resilience, as a reminder, is the capability to turn threats into oppor-
tunities prior to their becoming either. Past performance is the enemy of such
astuteness. High success seduces people to believe there are no threats to them
(could not possibly be, and even if there were, they were plenty capable of han-
dling them). Mediocre performance just does not care as long as the organiza-
tional life can be continued comfortably (from their perspective). Mediocrity
also likes to ignore the chance that extraordinary or outlier events can happen
because mediocrity’s experience does not suggest the events (the lack of such
trying or stretching experience often defines mediocrity). Very low perform-
ance has no time to observe anything other than its own internal machinations.
Far-away threats are of no consequence in the struggle for survival now.

COMPLACENCY
High performance: Reckless belief in self; assured of superiority
(highly exposed)
Mediocre performance: Lack of ambition; maintaining the status quo
Low performance: Rigidity resulting from threat; inward focus
(failure trap)

IN A STATE OF ARRESTED DECAY
I am writing this book in Virginia Lakes, which is 25 miles from Bodie,
an old gold mining town in the Eastern Sierras between the towns of
Bridgeport and Lee Vining, California. Left intact after its residents
abandoned the town after two bad fires and its gold reserves dwindling,
Bodie is now a true ghost town. The houses still have their furnishings
and belongings just as they did when it was a busy center of 10,000 peo-
ple. One of California’s largest towns in the 1880s, it will now be left
to turn to dust as it is worn away by the summer heat and winter snow.
Walking around Bodie and peeking into the buildings still standing,
like the Bodie hotel (“Meals served at all times”) and the school (a little