How organizations forget their crisis preparedness
- Patrick Trancu
- Jan 31
- 1 min read
In a thought provoking article, “How economies forget” published by the Financial Times, César Hidalgo — author of The Infinite Alphabet — explores how societies can lose capabilities just as they gain them. His central argument is striking:
“Knowledge that societies assume they have acquired for good can also disappear.”
Reading this prompted me to reflect on organizations that invest significant time and resources to become crisis-ready — only to see those capabilities erode over time.
The causes are rarely dramatic. More often, they are structural and cultural:
• leadership changes that shift priorities
• turnover that drains institutional memory
• reduced focus on preparedness once the sense of urgency fades
As Hidalgo writes:
“Sustaining an economy’s level of expertise is not effortless. It demands continuous investment… knowledge is a muscle that atrophies as soon as you stop lifting weights… it vanishes when it is not used.”
This applies perfectly to crisis preparedness.
Capabilities do not disappear because they become obsolete.
They disappear because they are not exercised.
Regular training, simulations, and crisis exercises are not procedural formalities — they are the mechanism through which teams refresh collective knowledge, strengthen decision-making reflexes, and maintain readiness under pressure.
The more you exercise, the more the organization remembers.
And the more it remembers, the more resilient it becomes.
Image generated by DELL-A. Original text improved with ChatGPT for better readability.
