Do You Have A Survival Instinct? Leveraging genetic codes to achieve fit inhostile business environments

It is too easy to blame market turbulence or unexpected events for a company'spoor performance. Yet this is frequently the response of managers tocircumstances and activities beyond their immediate control. As a consequence,managers and owners often fail to develop strategies for coping with challengeor crisis the next time it occurs. The result is that many organizations aredoomed to repeat the same or similar mistakes over and over again in a form ofcorporate d?j? vu. To gain insights into how companies can better manage inhostile environments, we consider the solutions that have evolved in nature overbillions of years. We trace nature's codes for adapting to hostile environmentsand explore the underlying characteristics of four genetic code types that canhelp business organizations to offset the negative implications of hostilitythrough ensuring strategic fit. We link the four genetic codes most frequentlyfound in nature with organizational capabilities. When correctly identified andleveraged, these capabilities can enable a company to focus attention andresource on how to manage successfully in hostile environment.