EMBA的小眼睛

Control or resilience

It's tempting to invest time, money and emotion into gaining control over the future. Security guards, written policies, reinforced concrete—there are countless ways we can enforce our control over nature, random events and fellow humans.

The problem is that while the first round of control pays huge dividends (keeping rabbits out the yard is a good way to make your garden grow), over time more control creates brittleness. The Maginot Line didn't hold up very well, and the hundred-year floodwalls don't work in face of a thousand-year flood.

The alternative is to invest in resilience, to build systems that can handle (or even thrive) when the unforeseen happens.

In one case, you can say, "when the roads are smooth, when you read the instructions, when conditions are ideal, this is the very best solution."

In the other case, you can say, "if people don't read the rider, if the unexpected happens, if there's a surprise attack, we won't be perfect, but it'll work better than any other alternative, which is a pretty good plan."