LIVING IN THE WORLD AS hard and chaotic as it is today, it's not enough just to be flexible and resilience -- we need to be "anti-fragile." Borrowing this (I think, beautifully expressive) term from the thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author both The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder whose thoughts I often allude to in this blog, I am referring to this term in the way almost similar to Taleb's. What does anti-fragile mean? There're three kinds of thing: Fragile, robust and anti- fragile.
Fragile things break under pressure. We treasure fragile things that are beautiful, such as glassware, chandeliers and ornaments. We put them up to show off our status, taste, class; but we obviously do not want to be like them, especially in the world today where everyone is both discretely and proudly at each other's throat. In other words, fragile things are exposed to volatility. Robust things, on the other hand, resist the pressure and survive. Robust objects don't break easily, as they are designed to resist "some" pressure.
Think of a rugged iPhone case, for instance. It's built to give the iPhone (a fragile object) some "robustness"; so that it won't break into pieces when it's dropped vertically or accidentally kicked to the side. Robust organizations, though not keen to be frequently exposed to volatility, are able to adapt to abrupt change through its elements of resilience. The author Ryan Holiday writes in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph: Subjected to those pressures, these individuals were transformed.
They were transformed along the lines that Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, outlined when he described what happens to businesses in tumultuous times: "Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them. But unlike robust objects that resist the pressure and hardship, anti-fragile things benefit from them. Can you think of something like that? Something or somebody that benefits from being exposed to shocks and crises? Nassim Nicholas Taleb doesn't provide a lot of convincing real world examples in his book.
But examples are actually plenty. As for someone, it almost goes without saying that everyone who has made it to the humanity's hall of fame never has it easy. They have been through hardships, crises and a series of unfortunate events that make many of us think "we would have just taken an easy way out already." Take Deng Xiaoping and the stoic philosopher Seneca for example. Both of them were purged twice -- and they both returned even stronger.
When Seneca was banished to a remote Island of Corsica for 8 years by Emperor Claudius of Rome, he used those years to practice stoicism; as well as the arts of letters, playwright and entrepreneurial investment, which his busy public life prior to the banishment did not afford him the time to do so. When Seneca was eventually allowed to return to Rome eight years later, he was able to abruptly regain his reputation, finance and became, writes William B.
Irvine, "the most renowned citizen of his time: the greatest living writer in prose and verse, the greatest name in literature since the golden age at the beginning of the century, and the favorite of the imperious empress." Deng Xiaoping, on the other hands, got purged twice by his political enemies. Instead of giving up, he used the time away from Beijing to garner support from those who, like him, were politically purged.
He carefully observed and learned from the two purges and was not for a minute believed that his political career was over (although most, if no all, people around him thought so). Deng was not just "robust" in the sense that he adapted to the banishment, but enjoyed the purge as it gave him the opportunity to join with those who believed in his way of thinking. Both Deng and Seneca were anti-fragile. What these guys have in common isn't their ability to solider on mindlessly and relentlessly.
I return to what Ryan Holiday continues in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph: Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength. It's a rather amazing and even touching feat. They took what should have held them back—what in fact might be holding you back right this very second—and used it to move forward.
In fact, it's their ability to calmly pause to assess the damage, inspect the situation only from the perspective that is useful for the damage control, and then turn the entire crisis on its head by using what may be, at first, the negative remnants of the circumstance. That's precisely what the pioneering entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson did when his proposal to take a few million dollars loan to modestly upgrade the entertainment systems on his Virgin planes was turned down by a bank.
He paused, inspect and anti-fragilely turn the crisis around. First, Branson re- assessed the situation and realized that the problem was not the 10 million pounds he was asking, but the bank's lack of trust in Branson's business (which in the 1990s was still infancy and overshadowed by major airlines such as the British Airways). Instead of giving up, he struck a "different kind of deal" with the major US aircraft manufacturers -- to buy 10 new aircrafts from them.
During the 1990s' UK recession when no one had the gut to invest, his proposal was welcomed by the stagnated manufacturers who desperately wanted to build and sell, the underperformed bank who wanted to lend, and the austerity-averse governments of both the US and the UK who wanted to see employment go up as a result of this monumental deal.
He used such an opportunity to not only stay stay afloat in the business (as in, being "robust"), but create a 4-billion-pound worth of financing to expand his business that would later go head-to-head with the British Airways. Not only was he robust and resilience, but anti-fragile. Branson loved that crisis, which gave him both the business and the fame. What's more, aircraft manufacturers also threw in the entertainment systems he originally wanted -- for free. Businesses will likely to benefit most from being anti-fragile.
Black swans, by definition, hit unexpectedly and the only way one can survive is to "be like Branson" -- be able to 360-degree assess the situation and act timely. I have seen abrupt ending of so many businesses. It's not because they're not aware of the decline, and possible crisis. They were aware of the decline, and possible crisis -- it's just that they were not "anti-fragile enough" to benefit from a fierce competition.
So, their "crisis management protocols" are too focused on triaging, and saving the largest portion of the business. But, I have used this example before, what if your most important products are films, in the era of digital cameras? We, too, I believe can benefit from the notion of being anti-fragile. How many times have we faced black swans event in life that made us think "what doesn't kill us makes us think it should have?" Plenty of times for me.
We are living in the world where it's harder and harder to predict. Like the "turkey story," there is no way that a well-fed turkey would know that his only true raison d'être was to be killed and fed to humans to celebrate Thanksgiving.
If this turkey was a stoic, it would have taken the moment of truth like Seneca who, upon being given a death sentence by his own pupil Emperor Nero (for whom Seneca had faithfully served as a counselor), proclaimed that which "was the best opportunity for him to practice Stoicism." Or, this turkey could simply have found the way to be anti-fragile and run away. In my line of work, I found that there're three kinds of companies: S tartups, running, and crumbling.
The first and the third kinds are likely to benefit most from the concept of anti-fragility. Both the newcomers and those about to go out of business will be fierce to find their competitive edge and will therefore work hard to be more than robust. The second kind won't even realize that they need to be anti-fragile because, like the turkey, everything seems okay until the day they are about to go out of business.
In my own life, there're times when I was attacked, backstabbed, and tripped by malicious people. They thought I was "fragile" and hoped that I would simply break into pieces. Some of them, while speaking to me with their sincerest look, actually hoped that I would literally disintegrate. I met so many of this kind of people, especially during the past decade of my life. Honestly, there're times when that was almost the case -- I almost literally disintegrated.
It's only then I realized two things which saved me: First, that my parents did not build me to be "fragile"; and, second, that, quite counterintuitively, there're always something that is quite useful in almost any unfortunate events. You just have to, like Sir Richard Branson, look for it. For example, as I wrote earlier, the fact that I was the odd-one-out in college did not prevent me from wanting to be more than just robust. My college life was really tough. None of my classmates liked me.
They also thought that the disliking was symmetrical, even though I did not have anything against them. The truth was that I did not have a single friend during my 6 years in college because I did not fit with the institutional culture whereby studiousness was looked down upon (as nerdy) and laziness was praised as "a way of the wise." Most of my classmates did not go to class and spent most of their time playing soccer. Of course, I could"robustly" pretend to like my friends and lean in.
That way I could have a few friends and would not be so friendless. Yet, I knew that I was going to spend only 6 years there as a student, and the real life would only begun after that. That's the beginning of my 8-hour-long reading project for the next 6 years.
I knew that had a "grand plan ahead," although at the time it seemed far-fetched: My teachers literally laughed at me during the only one time in my undergraduate life that I told anyone that I would like to go to the US to pursue my further study in architecture. They thought it was not possible for someone of my low intelligence and "personality" (again, my friendlessness was a big thing for them). It's not surprising that nobody understood what I was doing then.
My classmates, my teachers, and even some of my friends thought that I had lost it. They thought I had become depressed, sociopathic, and "anti-social" because I had no friends. Little did they know that I was in no way anti-social, I was just practicing "anti-fragility." So, let's be anti-fragile. Let's not let the unbearable lightness of words, selfishness of humans, and disturbances of which we do not have the capacity to control in this chaotic world bring us own.
Keep it simple: Here're what to do: We'll take all criticisms like they're free consultations. A lot of people pay tons of cash to professionals to criticize their businesses -- it's called consulting. So, now that there're people who would give us their thoughts for free, we will take them, embrace them, and long for more. Criticisms, in a way, produce a crisis and a shock. No one else likes to be criticized -- except us, because we are anti-fragile. We love to gain from crises and shocks.
Criticisms from great minds will prepare us for a more anti-fragile life, while criticisms from small-minded people will serve to confirm that what we are doing is already, and absolutely, the right thing to do; Never put all the eggs in one basket -- EVER AGAIN. The one single most alarming characteristic shared among almost everyone whose black swan events drive them to complete destruction (e.g., suicide) is how they do not diversify their investment portfolio -- not just money, but also time, life, etc.
As we know that we are not necessarily and solely responsible for unfortunate events in our life, it's unfair to think that it's possible for you to win just because you have done your best. The world isn't that simplistic -- in fact, it never was, is, and will. If you put all your money on one bet and you lose, you still lose even if it wasn't you who caused it. If you're still a waged labour, think about how you might turn your hobby into another job.
If you're solely relying on a day- to-day income, think about how your commitment to a longer-term task might give you both the pleasure of seeing things through and a more stable income, even for a short period of time. So, diversity your finance, your time, your hope, your expectation, and your ability to believe in your anti- fragility; Regain our independence. Taleb also writes that three most addictive substance in the world are: heroine, carbohydrates, and salary. I am sure we can all agree.
The point is, when we are interdependent on something, especially things to which we are addicted, we don't have a lot of choices and therefore prone to make mistakes and/or let someone else's mistakes affect us. Once we're independent, we can take a much better control of our own life. We can try out more new ideas and work more diligently on being anti-fragile.
I personally have never tried heroine, have cut down heavily on carbohydrates, and been working hard to be free, once and for all, from salary; Exercise everyday. Running, joking, biking, etc., create discomfort to the body and benefit us. The moment we realize that which is the case, we're one step closer to being anti-fragile. In addition, when a black swan event takes place, what you need more than a healthy mind is a healthy body to carry the mind.
So, by keeping your body fit, you're not only ready to tackle the black swan, but also embrace it and turn it on its head to benefit you. Again, because we're anti-fragile; and, finally, Whenever things seem too smooth, give yourself an obstacle to overcome. "Don't be that turkey." If something seems too smooth, step back and, be like a stoic, practice a "negative visualization" to find out what possible scenario you could create for yourself to test your anti-fragility.
Be like Bill Gate of Ancient Rome Seneca who frequently "caused bad things to happen as the result of our undertaking a program of voluntary discomfort" in order to learn how to be anti-fragile.
Again, as my debate coach always said, "You only win if you can be your own's fiercest debate counterpart." For a company that is doing well, give your indispensable employee a week of paid holiday and see if your system can make an on-the- fly adjustment to find someone to replace that employee in a fashion of the Dutch total football. If not, then you have a domain to build anti-fragility. You don't have to break your own fingers if you are a computer programmer to test your anti-fragility.
Maybe you could just give yourself a break: work a couple of hours fewer a day and see if you could make up for those two lost hours by other means.
On Design Thinking Part 9: Designing Your Life