Foundations explain why Pirates are inevitably faced with overwhelming ‘non-performance’, a driver in why companies fail.  Blame shifts from the Pirate to the crew of staff members.  An industry of tool-pushers has become a modern fad that flourishes on the likes of Strategic visions, Performance management and Customer-Relationship management.  Void of Systemic thinking, they treat symptoms of ill-results to enhance organisational health, culture and shared visions, without taking cognisance of root-causes present within its current Structures.  Any superficial remedy applied will strengthen the intrinsic flaw even further, compounded by ‘ill’ management, often leading to further damage, as fatal and degenerative as the structural flaw itself.

Structural flaws are by definition of a infra-structural nature, arising from a flawed Approach that lacks Insight and substantiation, thus infecting Structures defined to create, retain and distribute value:

• Approach, Processes, Methodology, Business model and Success, are at stake when flaws are of a structural nature. The source of origin of any Structure ties back to sound Systemic Thinking and intrinsic Design.  Get this right and the organisation can deal with Adaptive changes in time to come; get it wrong and the organisation will need to invest in re-structuring and re-engineering its entire base of competence;
• Structural flaws render inherent Effects that cannot change by attempts to enhance Performance. Flawed Context dominated by a subjective or internal (product and activity) perspective is the root-cause, not performance.  High-performance methodology or reconstructive techniques cannot correct inherent fundamentals which originate from Purpose, Systemic thinking and Approach.  Consequently, any remedy must first amend the original Approach, Methodology and Process (which all implicate value creation and value retention) lest the flaws remain intact thus continuing to influence the current Business model, only to strengthen the fundamental flaws deeper and further;
• Structures are formed dominantly by existing Industry cultures and norms by imprinting a traditional linear and vertical-structure to comply with industry standards. The culture immediately recommends a value chain which may traditionally resemble producers, wholesale, retail and after-sales for the ease of ‘markets and incumbents’.  For this reason, organisations seldom change their Approach from Industry culture in favour of a nodal Approach to reach and satisfy unmet customer needs.  The adopted Approach leads to a traditional Methodology with Processes that befit ‘industry skills’ creating space for talent to remain locked into the security of an Industry rather than knowing ‘why’ and knowing ‘how’.  Structures with intrinsic flaws follow ‘symptom-thinking’; imbedding non-functional elements (symptoms) into a Process Scheme expecting the architecture and design to perform consistently with reliable results.  When reliable results are neither consistent nor predictable by design, the Thinking applied defaults to render ‘efficient’ activity rather than to render an effective result.   The Intrinsic dynamics brought about by change in Process-design is vast; Structures that create, retain and distribute value have imbedded Processes and Resources driven by Product-centric criteria (attributes and features) and seldom driven by Needs-criteria (functions).  Organisations are bound to push products through market segments under rival responses, while the option for market segments to pull offerings through, evades incumbent providers.  Reality only dawns when market entrants try to oppose and invade the new segments; a vast population of Unserved, Underserved or Overserved customers actually existed outside the Mainstream market without anyone knowing, thanks to a Structure flaw with Symptom-thinking.  Any hasty attempt to deliver predictable outcomes and relevance without Causal-thinking, will be unsuccessful.   Performance status degenerates to ‘random’ as it fails to be ‘Predictive’ and Adaptive;
• Assets and Activities are imbedded within Structures by means of design Architectures. The intention is to map a design that is comprehensive enough which details the integration of processes and targets a full-life cycle portrayal of results and outcomes.  Architecture aimed at meeting unmet customer-needs inherently has greater accuracy than a generic process of activities populating volumetric outputs.  Performance is relegated to an ineffective state of ‘Inaccurate’, rendering results that are either unexpected or non-compliant, failing to be ‘Accurate’ and threatening Success and Survival;
• Process performance controls the functioning of a Causal mechanism by virtue of regulating the required Conditions and Circumstances. Without effective controls, the causal mechanism cannot function and cannot provide reliable results which favour desired outcomes.  The process flaw threatens Success and longevity;
• Intrinsic flaws relegate Success to be dependent upon intuition, fortuitous progress, hope and luck rather than by Design. Depending on ‘pure luck’ is fatalistic especially when rational building blocks are readily available that can and will provide reliable results.  Not knowing what you managed to do perfectly right, nor at being able to replicate the success of a single event, is the reality that many executives face daily due to their flawed thinking and designs.  Performance is relegated to ‘Ineffective’ threatening Survival;
• High Performance is a function of Structural design, the remedy of ill-performance rests in a new Approach with comprehensive Structural design and architectures. To many failing organisations, this reality dawns when it is too costly and too time-consuming to remedy imminent failure with fundamental changes.

Structural flaws are by definition intrinsic as they inform the Business model.  Rivals will always take aim at disrupting a business model to annihilate industry competitors, as the cost-time leverage to remedy a make-over of assets, resources, skills, processes and knowledge, is negative thus forcing closures.  Any internal decision to alter an imbedded business model, would therefore be fatal and catastrophic.  Vast industries have come to exist by promoting and propagated ‘best practice’ methods and practices which inadvertently strengthen flaws due to a lack of good theory.