Optimizing a tool or system means squeezing each drop of productiveness out of it. Within the short-run, optimization works so long as the world stays the identical.
We will optimize a tool to work at capability. Nonetheless, one thing working at capability blows up when you step on the fuel if you want 5% extra out of it. It’s brittle.
Good leaders construct for resilience as an alternative. Energy crops, transit programs, careers–they’re constructed to be sub-optimal a few of the time, with slack in-built, to allow them to thrive on a regular basis.
And the paradox?
If you happen to’re a aggressive capital-driven market the place little head begins can turn into larger leads which might result in lock in and monopoly, the plain technique is to optimize early and sometimes.
Outperforming your extra resilient rivals is feasible within the brief run.
And when you’re fortunate a number of occasions in a row, you get entry to extra capital or extra clients and you are able to do it once more, at a much bigger scale, leaving your considerate, slack-enabled rivals within the mud.
Till you crash.
And also you at all times will. As a result of optimized programs can’t thrive in a altering world.
If you happen to don’t wish to crash, don’t compete in marketplaces the place optimization is required.
PS Britain shut its final coal plant yesterday. 140 years in the past, coal started its conquest of the world in Britain, and now it’s over. Change is feasible.
