When something isn’t working, most people feel the urge to do something.
Launch a new initiative.
Cut expenses (and/or headcount).
Change the offer or the audience.
Call the donors.
Change the leadership structure.
You get the idea. "Do something... ANYTHING!"
Throw some spaghetti at the wall and let's see what sticks.
That impulse is what I call the Expansion Reflex.
It’s the energy that often shows up when an organization is under pressure and the old model is no longer producing the results it used to produce.
It's one of The Four Horsemen of Organizational Collapse, along with Outsourced Certainty, Command Leadership, and Quiet Compliance.
Each one can be dangerous when it’s used reactively or out of alignment with the organization’s values and Conditions for Success.
But each one can also be useful.
Used poorly, the Expansion Reflex can scatter an organization away from its core.
LEGO is a familiar example. In the early 2000s, Lego was near bankruptcy after expanding into multiple innovation efforts that pulled attention away from its core business. At one point they were losing a million dollars a day!
That is the dark side of the Expansion Reflex.
When things are not working, an organization starts adding more (and more) in an attempt to solve the problem. But the expansion isn't aligned to the core of the business. It doesn't reduce risk or create resilience. Instead that expansion creates more complexity inside an already strained system.
But other times “do something!” is not panic.
Sometimes it is the first honest recognition that one support has been carrying too much weight for too long.
Take the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) for example.
The Expansion Reflex is not automatically bad.
It becomes dangerous when it pulls an organization away from its core.
It becomes useful when it builds more support around the core.
OSF’s story shows how expansion can become a stabilizing force when it's used to create aligned resilience instead of scattered activity.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is one of the Pacific Northwest’s most significant cultural institutions.
Based in Ashland, Oregon, this theater company is a key part of the identity and economic life of Southern Oregon.
For years, OSF’s model depended heavily on ticket sales. Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported that OSF had historically received 70% to 80% of its operating revenue from ticket sales, while Portland Center Stage’s managing director said theater companies usually earn closer to 50% to 60% of revenue from ticket sales.
Now, I'm all for a theater that can be profitable and not rely solely on grants and donors to stay afloat!
In fact, a theater company with strong ticket sales has something many arts organizations would love to have: a direct, meaningful relationship with the people who come to see the work.
Ticket revenue can be a sign of relevance and reflect audience trust. It means the work is compelling (and popular) enough that people are willing to make the trek to see the shows time and again.
So the lesson here is not that funding your theater with ticket sales is bad. That's actually a GREAT thing!
AND...
Two things can be true at the same time.
A success factor can become a risk factor when too much of the model depends on it and the organization does not have a contingency for what happens when that condition changes.
Or as my mom used to say "don't put all your eggs in one basket."
For OSF, ticket sales were the visible result of several Conditions for Success working together:
When those conditions were available, the model worked.
When they became unstable, gaps in the model were exposed.
This is why I talk about Conditions for Success.
Most leaders use goals to think about what they want. That's important, but it's only part of the story.
Conditions for Success help you see what has to be in place in order for the goal, strategy, or model to work.
They also help you see where the risk lives.
When I work with clients, we look at their Conditions for Success through seven Domains of Influence (DOI):
The domains matter because not every condition is equally controllable.
Some conditions sit close to the organization’s center. Leaders can shape them directly.
Others sit farther out. Leaders may be able to influence them, but have little to no control over them. And some conditions cannot be fully predicted at all. They can only be met with adaptability, reserves, trust, and contingency.
In the Core Domain, OSF had to reckon with identity and purpose. What was the organization trying to preserve? The old operating model? The mission? The cultural role it played in the community? The answer matters because not every version of preservation leads to the same decision.
In the Personal Domain, the human layer came under strain. Leadership capacity, staff morale, artistic energy, decision fatigue, and the emotional load of uncertainty all matter when an organization is trying to survive prolonged pressure. And that doesn't even take into account the personal health and well-being of everyone during COVID restrictions!
In the Operational Domain, OSF needed enough staffing, production infrastructure, rehearsal time, venues, seasonal planning, and logistical capacity to mount a repertory season. COVID and the wildfires did a number on that!
In the Relational/Social Domain, the organization depended on relationships with audiences, artists, staff, board members, donors, the Ashland community, and the broader theater world. As much as people loved the theater, COVID and wildfires meant they simply couldn't attend, and therefore, didn't buy tickets. When ticket sales plummeted, there weren't enough available funds to cover the gap.
In the Capital Domain, OSF needed usable money. Not theoretical money. Not assets on paper. Usable money: ticket revenue, donor gifts, grants, cash flow, unrestricted reserves, and enough financial flexibility to cover operations. Their endowment fund was made up primarily of restricted funds that could only be used for specific purposes, not for the general operations of the company.
In the Systemic/Macro Domain, OSF was exposed to forces no single organization could control: COVID, wildfire smoke, tourism shifts, audience behavior, inflation, philanthropic patterns, and the broader instability facing live performing arts. There was no contingency in place to cover those possibilities.
And then there was DKDK: the unknown-unknown layer. Some disruptions could be anticipated in general, like wildfire smoke becoming a recurring risk in Oregon. You may not know WHEN they'll happen, but if you set up a theater in the wilderness, there's a non-zero chance that you'll be impacted by wildfires at some point.
But the timing, scale, and compounding effects of pandemic shutdowns, audience hesitation, leadership turnover, and post-COVID recovery patterns could not be fully known in advance.
When ticket sales collapsed, it revealed pressure across the whole system.
OSF was hit by multiple disruptions: Wildfire smoke affected outdoor performances. COVID disrupted live performance, travel, and audience behavior. OPB reported that OSF laid off about 80% of its workforce in March 2020, and that ticket revenue during peak COVID years dropped by almost 98%.
When a core success condition fails, the organization does not simply have a marketing problem or a sales problem. It has a model problem.
If your model depends heavily on people buying tickets and attending live performances, and people cannot or will not attend live performances at the same level, then the entire support structure gets tested.
They force the harder question: What does our success depend on?
And then: What happens if one of those conditions becomes unavailable?
For OSF, the answer became painfully clear. The model depended heavily on ticket sales, and ticket sales depended on conditions the organization could influence but not fully control.
The risk was concentrated and no contingency was available.
To be clear: this was an issue felt across a number of industries during the COVID lockdowns, it's not an isolated case.
There was another important issue: OSF had assets, but not all assets are equally useful in a crisis.
OPB reported that OSF’s total assets were nearly $96 million according to its 2021 financial audit, but much of that was tied up in land, buildings, and other forms that were not easily usable. OPB also reported that almost all of OSF’s approximately $39 million endowment was restricted by donors for specific purposes, with only about 15% unrestricted.
Having assets is not the same as having liquidity.
An endowment fund is not always flexible operating money.
Money designated for specific purposes means you can't use it to cover payroll, bridge a cash gap, or keep productions running... unless that's what it was designated for!
So OSF needed more flexible support because their operating model relied heavily on a success factor that had become unstable.
This is where Conditions for Success becomes a risk map.
If a key success factor carries too much of the model, leaders need to ask:
What happens if this condition weakens?
What kind of contingency do we need?
Where do we need more flexibility?
What would give us more time to respond?
What other supports need to exist before the primary support fails?
Those are stewardship questions that give your organization a better shot at longevity.
By 2023, OSF was in a public financial crisis.
In April of that year, the organization launched The Show Must Go On: Save Our Season, Save OSF, an emergency fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $2.5 million to help complete the 2023 season. OSF said the funding gap sat between May and July, and that the campaign was intended to prevent season closure and layoffs.
It also launched a transformational gift campaign aimed at larger gifts, announced major commitments from the Hitz Foundation and Mellon Foundation, cited individual pledges toward stabilization, noted endowment funds released in December, and identified board pledges. OSF also canceled that year’s production of It’s Christmas, Carol! so staff could focus on the 2023 repertory season, paused planning for the 2024 season (pending fundraising results), and temporarily adjusted executive responsibilities.
While it looked like they were making cuts, they were actually making moves that just happened to be cuts.
That is Expansion Reflex. Not one move. Many moves.
A grassroots campaign. A major-gift campaign. Foundation support. Individual and board pledges.
They even got approval to pull some money out of the endowment fund.
From the outside, that was a flurry of activity.
But flurry and failure are not the same thing.
The Expansion Reflex becomes dangerous (one of the Four Horsemen) when the organization expands activity without expanding clarity. It becomes usefl (a White Knight) when the organization expands its options in service of the mission.
In OSF’s case, the expansion was aimed at a specific problem: create enough stability for the institution to survive while the model underneath it is rebuilt.
That is different from “try everything and hope something works.”
OSF was trying to solve a Conditions for Success problem.
Ticket revenue had been carrying too much weight, so the organization needed more supports...
Emergency fundraising.
Major gifts.
Endowment fund flexibility.
Season adjustments.
...and so on.
That is the White Knight version of Expansion Reflex.
Not expansion away from the mission, but expansion focused on the core mission of the organization.
The 4 Horsemen of the Collapse version of Expansion Reflex pulls the organization away from its core - like what happened with Lego. It adds more, but not necessarily in ways that strengthen the thing the organization exists to do.
The White Knight version expands the supports around the core of the business.
For OSF, the core was not just “sell more tickets.”
The core was live theater, artistic work, cultural contribution, community identity, and the continuation of an institution that mattered to artists, audiences, and the region.
Ticket sales had been one major way that core was supported.
But when ticket sales became unstable, the organization had to expand the support structure.
The Expansion Reflex worked because the old model needed more than one way to stay alive!
By the 2025 season, OPB reported that OSF saw a 42% increase in ticket sales from 2024, that almost half of theatergoers were new, and that many shows exceeded revenue goals. OPB also reported that ticket sales represented only about a third of company revenue, down from as much as 80% in past years, while donations made up about half of the year’s revenue.
That doesn't mean everything is solved.
In fact, the same OPB report noted that OSF was still relying on large seven-figure gifts and that the organization had less than half the number of members it had in 2019.
This is, as of this writing, an incomplete comeback tale, but it's still a good one!
It is a story about an organization creating more options for itself after discovering that one option had been carrying too much weight.
That is what strategic resilience looks like in real life.
Not a magic bullet, but a broader support structure to make things more stable and sustainable.
Every organization relies on something. Where are you relying too heavily on one or two things?
Solo and micro-preneurs often find themselves as the bottleneck in the business, but even there you can plan contingencies. In larger organizations, it may look like overdependence on one revenue stream or one major donor. Or a platform (social media, anyone?) or audience segment.
Or, in the case of OSF, an assumption about what people will keep doing.
Any of those can be a legitimate strength, until it becomes the thing that makes the organization unstable.
A useful Expansion Reflex asks not just what to do quickly, but also where you need supports first.
A destructive Expansion Reflex asks what you can do quickly without regard to how it impacts the core of the enterprise.
One creates resilience; the other creates unnecessary complexity.
The Expansion Reflex becomes a White Knight when leaders use it to build aligned optionality.
That means the organization expands in ways that match its values, protect its mission, and strengthen (or are contingengies for) the Conditions for Success required to keep going.
For a nonprofit, that might mean diversifying funding without becoming donor-captured.
For a business, it might mean opening a new revenue stream without abandoning the core customer.
For a school, it might mean changing program structure without betraying the educational mission.
For a community institution, it might mean expanding support while preserving the trust that made the institution matter in the first place.
Expansion is easy. Aligned expansion is harder.
And in a crisis, aligned expansion may be the difference between recovery and collapse.
The Expansion Reflex did not help OSF because “doing more” is always the answer.
It helped because the organization needed more than one way to stay alive.
When the old model was too dependent on ticket revenue, the organization had to create new supports around the mission.
That is the White Knight version of Expansion Reflex.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival story is not a neat little case study about a theater that had a hard season and bounced back.
It's a story about what happens when a long-successful model becomes vulnerable because one of its most important Conditions for Success can no longer be taken for granted.
It is also a story about how a Horseman can be a White Knight.
The Expansion Reflex can contribute to collapse when it shows up as frantic overactivity, misaligned initiatives, or leadership panic dressed up as momentum.
But when it's used consciously, it can help an organization create the options it should have had before the crisis arrived.
Know what your success depends on. Know which of those conditions are fragile. And when one support carries too much weight, build other supports before the whole structure starts to wobble.
That is the real work of high-stakes decision-making.
Not just deciding what to do when the crisis arrives.
Deciding what must be true so the organization has enough options left when it does.
Is your organization circling a decision or facing a high-stakes situation where an outside perspective can help? Let's talk.