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Resilience of a System Matters
Systems / Principles
A system's ability to absorb shocks matters more than its peak performance.
The Idea
Efficiency optimises for normal conditions. Resilience optimises for abnormal ones. Most systems are tuned for efficiency and then broken by a shock they didn't plan for. Slack, redundancy, and diversity cost money — until they save you.
Why It Matters
- Crises reveal which systems were resilient and which only looked strong.
- "Lean" and "efficient" often means "brittle."
- One failure in a highly optimised system cascades. In a resilient one, it's absorbed.
How to Apply
- Build in slack — time, money, capacity — even when it feels wasteful.
- Avoid single points of failure.
- Test failure modes deliberately (chaos engineering, fire drills).
- Diversify dependencies.
The Trade-off
Resilience costs efficiency. You can't have both fully. Choose based on how catastrophic failure is.
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