Page 40 - Complexity Perspective_Neat

This could happen in any of the waves of diffusion. All that is
necessary is that the affected organization is ‘blind’ to the new
functionality; such blindness can result from willful failure to
monitor the context outside the ‘usual suspects’, cultural
blindness, becoming captive to a legacy installed base, or simple
hubris.

 The prolonged failure of the organization to make micro-
adaptations as competitors co-evolves the context leading to a
total loss of fit. This can be the result of sloth, cultural blindness,
internal orientation, a focus on exploitation rather than
exploration, external demands pushing the business to short
term profit maximization, or simple incompetence in contextual
monitoring.

 An event in the general context, completely outside the enacted
context of the organization, that eliminates a key element of its
business model. This could range from war to the entry of a new
competitor.

 The simple wearing out of the old organizational purpose. This
can easily happen to activist groups that succeed, charities that
eliminate the need they serve, or political parties stranded by a
shift in public preferences. The response of the organization is
most commonly to repurpose themselves, as the agents that
compose the organization have a personal interest in its
economic survival.

In all these cases, a tipping point arises, when the economics of the old
system are undermined and it moves from a system in stable
equilibrium to a state of near chaos, actual chaos, or disorder. The
normal response of a system under such stress is to attempt to survive.
The required leadership response is to impose order and then attack
the problem through stabilizing the resources of the business (people,
funds, productive capacity), reshaping the system goal and translating
that into a revised business model, and then pushing the process of
detailed implementation out to the edges of the organization.

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