Chapter 6
Fitness to Adapt: Overcoming Complacency
An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall.
—Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall
We have adopted the strategic fitness process for all the plans we’ve done here, and I have found it immensely useful. It’s almost like cheating. All the places you would have screwed up, they [employees] give you the answers, so you don’t have to screw up . . . It has rebalanced our focus . . . Amazing how far you can drift.
—Joshua Duncan, CEO, American Diner
As Charles Darwin noted, “It is not the strongest species, nor the most intelligent that survive, it is the most adaptive.” To remain competitive, it must keep adapting. But adaptation ...
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