Chapter 4. Complacency: Success Breeds Failure
Complacency is the sense of security and comfort that derives from the belief that the success you’ve had in the past will continue indefinitely. It breeds in the assumption that the future will be like the present and past, that nothing will change. Complacency likes blindness and inertia; it likes the status quo. It hates urgency and believes in slow, cautious deliberation. It settles easily into large institutions, where size and scale provide a natural armor against the real, fast-moving world outside. Complacency is fostered by the illusion of “sturdy genes”—in other words, bad things can’t happen here.
Put another way, complacency rests on three pillars: your success in the past, your belief ...
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