Autonomy Assets
Why Resilience Beats Optimization When Conditions Change
Hernán Cortés entered Tenochtitlán as a victorious conqueror on November 8, 1519. Seven months later, during La Noche Triste, his besieged men tried to break out across narrow causeways under relentless attack by tens of thousands of enraged Aztecs. Many conquistadors carried a heavy burden of gold, their dream ticket to a splendid future. When they fell into the water, the gold pulled them under. They drowned because they optimized for a future that no longer existed.
The same pattern appears in Europe’s energy crisis. For years, policy and investment aligned around the transition to renewables. Gas storage buffers were reduced, access to fossil fuel capacity was constrained, and grid limitations remained unresolved. When supply disruption hit, it became clear that you cannot heat a house with a projection.
Both cases share the same hidden mechanism. Resources that were assets under one set of assumptions became liabilities the moment conditions changed. The gold was real, the storage reductions made sense and the transition targets were legitimate. None of that mattered when the system shifted.
Performance Assets work on the same logic. They are bets on a future that must arrive on time and in sequence. Think of rapid scaling before unit economics are tested and proven, or a market entry which requires a regulatory window being opened. Rational in a spreadsheet, vulnerable under pressure.
Autonomy Assets are the opposite. They determine whether you survive the next game, regardless of which game it turns out to be. Clear decision power at the lowest competent level, protected executive thinking time or cash buffers that are immediately accessible.
These do not optimize for a specific future, but protect your ability to respond to anything that the future may throw at you.
An organization rich in performance and poor in autonomy has its judgment clouded by a vision of future.
Boardroom Drill
- Which part of your strategy only works if the future unfolds exactly as planned?
- Where have you reduced today’s resilience to fund tomorrow’s promise?
- What are you carrying that slows you down right now?
If you hesitate, you are already carrying too much.