Black Swan, predicting the unpredictable. Sortof.

In the Jim Collins book, Great By Choice, he discusses a topic he coins as 10X companies. These organizations experience growth which laterally exceeds that of current industry trends, with particular emphasis in difficult economic times for other members of the sector.

Great, what does this have to do with an unpredictable event? One of the characteristics of a successful organization is outlined in a concept coined as “Productive Paranoia.” The concept encompasses two core elements that I found useful.

  1. Building cash reserves for the tough times.
    Being at its core a business-minded research study, this same concept can be adapted for Artois applications, particularly with regards to ministry and technology. Most weeks go by with no problems, hitches, or otherwise; we begin to consider this the norm and instinctively begin to feel comfortable with our equipment, volunteers or otherwise. While it’s great that equipment is working great in the first place the lesson we can take away from this is that there are in fact anomalies which try as we might, we cannot predict. For those of us involved with technology as a whole know fully that equipment regardless of expense can inevitably fail.
  2. Zoom out, Zoom in.

At some point, this post became a fragment or uncompleted post. Because the nature of this blog is partially for personal reference and public consumption wherever appropriate I’ve left it posted here.

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