People will not abandon the instruments that define their competence and identity, even when carrying them is fatal.
Weick's 1996 analysis of Mann Gulch, where thirteen firefighters died in 1949 still carrying tools they had been ordered to drop. The tools were their competence; dropping them meant ceasing to be a firefighter while still needing to outrun a fire.
In practice
- A veteran engineer will not use the new deployment tooling because their expertise is in the old one, and the expertise is the identity.
- A newspaper's best reporter cannot work in the digital newsroom because the craft they are known for is the thing being replaced.
- Standing
- Drawn from firefighters who died still carrying equipment after being ordered to drop it.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Why organisations learn, harden and decline