I’ve been reflecting recently on the concept of ‘antifragility’ and how this applies to my clients and their systems. Originally coined by Nassim Taleb in 2012, based on his own appreciative enquiry into systems that flourish and thrive, rather than those which survive or collapse, in the face of volatility, uncertainty, disorder and chaos. He uses the metaphor of the classical mythological serpent, Hydra: when one of Hydra’s many heads was cut off, two more heads would emerge from the site of the wound! Hydra embodies the physical equivalent of the psychological construct of ‘post-traumatic growth’: from the pain and destruction it emerged stronger and more powerful. Hydra would be said to be ‘antifragile’.
Power cuts show us how vulnerable we are
The recent total loss of power in the Iberian peninsula and the knock on consequences are an example of just how fragile our global systems have become. My daughter and her partner were in Barcelona, sending me messages about the situation: fires were coming out of the local metro station, no-one knew what was happening. They were due to fly back to the UK that evening but there was no rail, metro, food, water, and no Uber’s (they did manage to get on a bus, eventually!). They of course had no cash or travel insurance, food, water, shelter, and only had intermittent mobile phone signals on their limited battery charge.
High-impact, volatile and random or unpredictable events can and do happen
We like to pretend to ourselves that we are surrounded by a reasonably stable environment, but that is just how we as humans cope – ‘life is like pushing a boat out into a river, knowing it has a hole in it and will one day sink’ as Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun and philosopher writes. High-impact, volatile and random or unpredictable events can and do happen regularly: we all learned that from the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the changes to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and NHS England.
Antifragility exists in nature
We know that antifragility exists in all aspects of our bio-psycho-social environment, from the evolution of culture and political systems, to other antifragile events such as viral mutation, genetic adaptation, muscle growth, vaccination, and in our human capacity for post-traumatic growth. Indeed a certain amount of positive stress and weight-bearing exercise are needed for the emotional and physical growth of human beings. I noticed that the blurb about Sir David Attenborough’s new film also directly refers to the concept: “The ocean can bounce back to life,” Sir David says. “If left alone it may not just recover but thrive beyond anything anyone alive has ever seen.”
Antifragility is different from resilience
Resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ to the starting position: antifragility is transformational and relates to positive change and adaptation.
Antifragility recognises that linear thinking is not always helpful, we need to be able to grow bigger than our challenges through our own adult development. Antifragility literally requires us to change the shape of our neural networks in our brains and bodies to enable us to be comfortable with dialectical thinking, and to know how to regenerate ourselves as both individuals and as systems.
What does this mean for us as medical and public health leaders?
This doesn’t mean that we should actively try to create crises and suffering of course, rather here are some of the features of antifragility to incorporate into your leadership roles:
- Predictability is an illusion
- Our cognitive biases prevent us from acknowledging individual and system fragility
- Shocks, setbacks and disorder will happen, how do we prepare to be transformed by them
- The challenge is the foundation for our thriving and going beyond what we think is possible
- Errors are to be sought out within our local system and to be used to pivot forwards from
- Success is pursued through keeping options open and being opportunistic in a never ending process of decision making
- Slack is built into the system to create wiggle room for emergence and innovation
- Fragilities are identified and welcomed within safe limits
- Complex interdependencies exist at every level
- The control we believe we have in terms of cause-and-effect is only real in very limited circumstances
Develop the capacity to regenerate yourself and your systems
My clients are mainly senior medical and public health leaders, facing unprecedented circumstances and needing fresh perspectives and new skills to enable themselves, their families and colleagues, and health systems to thrive.
I can help you to:
- Safely expose yourself to risks appropriate to your stage of growth and development
- Increase your awareness of and tolerance of uncertainty
- Create ‘safe-to-fail’ ‘tinkering’ experiments outside of your comfort zone aiding innovation and invaluable learning
- Make mistakes and errors which are small and of no significant adverse consequence but can transform your insights
- Diversify your resources and opportunities through innovative career structures
- Take things out through strategic simplification
- Build in ‘wiggle-room’ to ensure sufficient capacity to adapt to unexpected issues
- Be flexible for an unknowable future
The future you need to equip yourself for is fundamentally different from the past
As our world gets more complex, global events which impact on us as individuals and our systems are likely to become more disruptive, random and chaotic. The future is going to be different from the past in unimaginable ways: resilience building will only take you so far. How ready are you to enhance your antifragility?
Dr Fiona Day is the world’s only Leadership Coach with advanced coaching psychology, medical and public health qualifications (MBChB, FFPH, BPS Chartered Psychologist in Coaching Psychology, EMCC Master Practitioner Coach & Mentor) and is in a unique position to help you and your teams to flourish. Fiona specialises in coaching medical and public health leaders, is a coach Supervisor, and an EQA Foundation Award Holder. Get 3 hours of FREE CPD with Fiona’s Health Career Success Programme here. Book a free confidential 30 minute Consultation with Fiona here. Subscribe and listen to her Podcast ‘Transformational Thinking for Health Leaders’ here.
Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay
Taleb, N.N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. London: Penguin
Corrie S & Kovacs L. Does coaching need the concept of antifragility? The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 17, No. 2, December 2021
