Why do organizations with all the right resilience practices still fail during crises? The answer lies in understanding the difference between controls and guardrails. Controls create friction during normal operations, while guardrails activate only when approaching real danger. This distinction could transform how your organization responds to uncertainty.

The Prevention Paradox describes a destructive cycle where successful resilience work makes itself appear unnecessary, leading organizations to systematically disinvest in the very capabilities that prevent disasters. This occurs because human cognition struggles to value "non-events"—the failures that never happen—causing leadership to question the ROI of prevention work during stable periods, ultimately resulting in budget cuts that erode resilience capabilities until major outages inevitably return. Breaking this cycle requires making invisible prevention work visible through measurement frameworks that quantify prevented failures, business-impact narratives that translate technical prevention into economic value, and cultural transformation that celebrates prevention work as a strategic capability rather than a cost center.

Learn how small, reasonable decisions gradually push organizations toward failure. A detailed case study of TrendCart's drift from safety to crisis and recovery.

Discover why traditional root cause analysis and 5 Whys frameworks fall short in complex systems. Learn practical alternatives and the 'Trojan Horse' approach to implement meaningful change in your organization's incident investigation process.