A shared ordeal produces an asset that cannot be purchased afterward.

observation — attributed to Ben Erwin

Erwin describes his workforce during 2020 as a crew caught on a rock face when the weather turned, an experience nobody would choose but one that leaves behind a relationship money cannot recreate once the storm has passed. He connects this directly to an operational outcome: regrowing the company required the muscle memory of the people who had lived through the shutdown together, not simply rehiring to the same headcount. The observation is that organizations which endured a genuine crisis together retain a form of capital that organizations which merely avoided one, or scattered during one, have to rebuild from nothing.

For comparing organizations that stayed intact through a crisis against those that dispersed.

crisis, organizational-capital, retention, cohesion