How to keep a performance degraded system to running in high-quality before failure is a difficult issue. This study focuses on the performance degraded system and designs a compensation control strategy to compensate for performance changes caused by the degradation of the system components. The strategy enables the system to maintain output close to that of the new system before failure. The theoretical analysis results indicate that when H(0)>>1, the compensated system output approximately equals to the output of the new system. The second-order mechanical system composed of a mass spring damping is taken as an example to illustrate the proposed strategy, assuming that the mass and damping coefficients remain constant while the spring rigidity deteriorates, the steady-state values and overshoot changes of the system were simulated and analyzed. The simulation results show that the gap between the steady-state values and overshoot of the free degradation system and using compensation control strategy is significant, and increases with the severity of the system degradation. The research results can provide theoretical reference in maintaining high-quality running for degraded systems before failure.