Impact Trust • Working glossary
Budget of possibilities (Gregory Bateson)
Deliberately keeping options open and slack in the system, the opposite of optimising for efficiency.
Details
Our Take
From cybernetics, applied to institutional design. Counter-intuitive in efficiency-driven organisations: the 'waste' of maintaining unused options is actually the source of resilience. Maintaining a wide portfolio of options and slack looks like waste until the moment it saves you.
Examples of Use
Gregory Bateson, cybernetics, Kirsten Dunlop / Climate-KIC
Synonyms/Variants
Optionality
Redundancy, Slack
Typical everyday wording
Keeping your options open even when it looks inefficient
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