In the book I talk a lot about how, in the face of rapidly changing contexts, there is a need for greater organisational manoeuvrability and not just speed. Speed is great, but speed in the wrong direction helps no-one. Improved adaptability helps responsiveness but it can also build resilience and momentum if done right. In contrast, overly rigid planning or processes or hierarchies can generate greater fragility over time, creating a dangerous kind of brittleness to the organisation that leaves it unable to cope effectively with change.
So I rather like the distinction drawn here between the different states of organisational readiness and response. To paraphrase:
FRAGILITY: is about breaking without any significant signs of alteration.
Being ROBUST is about the ability to resist against known changes or stresses
RESILIENCE is absorbing/reacting to disturbances by re-establishing as close as possible to the original state
An ANTIFRAGILE system however, is one that improves as a result of stresses and failures (many biological systems have this capability of-course including disease response and evolution) and evolves to a new state which is better suited to the new environment.
Agile and iterative approaches have continuous adaptation at their heart, enabling antifragility and improved recovery from unanticipated events. The author goes on to outline some sensible principles around implementing greater agility including validating changes in small increments, staying focused on value delivery, decentralising control, removing unnecessary synchronisation of flow or dependencies, and making culture explicit (all stuff I talk about in the book). But this is an important distinction. Do we want a business that is simply robust or resilient in that it resists or absorbs changes but fails to learn and adapt? Or do we want one that is also able to continuously learn and improve from every test or challenge? I know where my money would go.
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