Mastering Strategic Risk: A Framework for Leading and Transforming Organizations

Chapter 2 The Three Elements: Creating, Facilitating, and Supporting Your Competitive Advantage

We live in a world of patterns—both in the natural world and the world we’ve created for ourselves. Throughout time, there are numerous examples where mankind has leveraged patterns or structures in nature to build many of his modern-day inventions and tools. From the airplane to the camera, from sonar to the ball joint, countless creations came from the careful study of nature. These patterns in nature can assist us understanding the forces that govern the world we’ve created, and in managing organizations.

A Framework Taken from Nature

Organizations are no different, for their basic structure and the dynamics that govern them are similar to systems found in nature. However, what makes this new insight into the parallels between organizational systems and natural systems important is that it provides us with new learnings, which can serve as powerful drivers of performance in companies. These performance drivers are at the core of an organization’s ability to master strategic risk in a highly complex and dynamic world.

Natural Systems

If we closely observe how systems in our natural world work, there are certain core elements that ensure they operate effectively and with uncanny precision. I’ve observed a few of these elements only to discover that they are a part of all systems, processes, and living creatures in nature. Consider systems, processes, and the creatures in our ...