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Just as choosing the right keystone habits can create amazing change, the wrong ones can create disasters.
even destructive habits can be transformed by leaders who know how to seize the right opportunities. Sometimes, in the heat of a crisis, the right habits emerge.
Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war. Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because they have routines— habits— that create truces that allow everyone to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done. Organizational habits offer a basic promise: If you follow the established patterns and abide by the truce, then rivalries won’t destroy the company, the profits will roll in, and, eventually, everyone will get rich.
The problem with sabotage is that even if it’s good for you, it’s usually bad for the fi rm. So at most companies, an unspoken compact emerges: It’s okay to be ambitious, but if you play too rough, your peers will unite against you. On the other hand, if you focus on boosting your own department, rather than undermining your rival, you’ll probably get taken care of over time.
Most of the time, routines and truces work perfectly. Rivalries still exist, of course, but because of institutional habits, they’re kept within bounds and the business thrives. However, sometimes even a truce proves insufficient. Sometimes, an unstable peace can be as destructive as any civil war.
Truces are only durable when they create real justice. If a truce is unbalanced— if the peace isn’t real— then the routines often fail when they are needed most.
Creating successful organizations isn’t just a matter of balancing authority. For an organization to work, leaders must cultivate habits that both create a real and balanced peace and, paradoxically, make it absolutely clear who’s in charge.
Sometimes, one priority— or one department or one person or one goal— needs to overshadow everything else, though it might be unpopular or threaten the balance of power. Sometimes, a truce can create dangers that outweigh any peace.
During turmoil, organizational habits become malleable enough to both assign responsibility and create a more equitable balance of power. Crises are so valuable, in fact, that sometimes it’s worth stirring up a sense of looming catastrophe rather than letting it die down.
