Robustness has always been a logical desire when it comes to the company and its culture in particular. But too much of robustness may become stiffness, and stiff is the last thing you need in today’s environment. The challenge is how to keep robust pillars and principles without compromising adaptation, response and continuous reinvention.
The fears around too much robustness are not new, of course. Perhaps somobody who put it clear and memorable was the educator Sugata Mitra in his TED Prize acceptance speech, [1] when referring to the British Empire: “They engineered a system so robust, that it’s still with us today, continually producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists.”
The trouble is what to substitute robustness for. Agile, flexible, adaptable etc, are the logical cultural antonymous, but what they mean has multiple interpretations. Si Alhir, [2] has done a great job framing all these possibilities . Antifragile [3], as described by Nassin Taleb makes tremendous sense.
The key is to establish organizational platforms that allow modification, resilience, improvement, adaptation and all of the above, and that for each time of modification, resilient behavior, improvement or adaptation, there is a gain, growth, better chances of success.
Sustainable, yes, bot not too much.
Just imagine ‘sustainable adolescence’.