Antifragility

Resilience has long been touted as a cornerstone of economic and social systems and processes. Usually this means a return to ‘normal’ after things go wrong – whether it is recovering from illness, bouncing back after economic downturn, or coping with the fallout of a major social crisis or disturbance.

In the case of the mega emergencies and rolling crises that have come to dominate our lives, a return to normal is not only not possible, but may not be desirable. We’re sure you can relate – our pre-COVID world had a lot going for it, but we’re still not keen to return to all aspects of that life either. The systemic inequality laid bare by the pandemic is one thing we’d rather not keep, not to mention a lack of action on climate change, or even those super demanding and lengthy meetings that must only be undertaken in person. Flexible working is a development we may want to hold on to.

If we can help it, we want something a little better for the future, so the idea of resilience or robustness (effectively, withstanding hard times but not necessarily benefiting from them or improving as a result of them) doesn’t feel as relevant anymore.

Mega emergencies may involve crises that occur simultaneously or overlap, affect everyone, everywhere, and everywhen, and affect different communities (or regions) differentially. Such drastic events are challenging for individuals and organisations alike, but also provide opportunities to create “better normals” on recovery. We believe it is ‘antifragile’ systems that are most poised to benefit policymakers when things go wrong. We are in a unique position to rethink how we develop and implement policy, right now.

Antifragility

With origins in economics and risk management, antifragility is a concept developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb^[i] to refer to systems that increase their capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, uncertainty, mistakes, attacks or failures. Antifragility goes beyond robustness and resilience to describe things that gain from disorder.

Whilst the concept of antifragility might be new, the reality of antifragility is familiar for most of us whom have ever been vaccinated (exposing us to a small amount of risk in order to gain exponential disease resistance) or lived in disaster-prone areas (we’re looking at you, North Queensland).

In the literature on risk management, antifragility reflects not only risk mitigation, but an appetite for risk exposure. It reflects government and personal systems focused not only on limiting uncertainties, but actively accepting, planning for, learning from, and becoming better as a result of uncertainties and increasing our risk appetite. As Aven notes, “a system that is antifragile is exposed to stressors (uncertainties, variation, and risk at rather moderate levels) to obtain improvements and high performance at a later stage”^[ii].

The theory highlights our abilities to make good decisions during bad times, but how can we actively apply the idea of antifragility to our government, business and personal lives?

Our big challenges

Over time, policymakers have sought to develop systems that prevent, prepare, respond and recover from shocks, volatility and uncertainty. The focus has mostly rested on risk mitigation – whether this be in policy realms or life more generally. Yet, we know that in increasingly complex and interdependent risk events, such as the current pandemic, there is an imperative to develop greater capacity to anticipate, absorb and respond across a cascading spectrum of hazards. We have to maintain the capacity for “business as usual” alongside flexible and rapidly scalable crisis response capabilities and risk analysis.

The opportunities of antifragility

Antifragility encourages a more radical approach than our traditional attitude to bad stuff happening – in that it actively accepts and encourages risk, uncertainty and a degree of volatility. It is a stretch mindset as much as it is a set of decisions and policies that develop our (1) capabilities, (2) adaptability and flexibility, and (3) options.

In our personal worlds, we’re seeing a rise in entrepreneurialism as well as a need to look beyond only one stream of income or job in order to make the most of economic uncertainty, spread the risk, and also be poised to take opportunities when they arise. Not only does this approach often result in a chance to develop one’s capabilities and skills in a new area, it actively encourages our adaptability and flexibility, whilst providing options.

In some businesses and  governments, we’re seeing similar trends with organisations actively welcoming a degree of risk in order to absorb and learn from failure or mistakes early. It’s a classic evolutionary approach, focused on maintaining purpose yet adopting a degree of fluidity to cope with contemporary events and shocks. Policymakers may need to engage more with scenario planning and horizon-scanning exercises, and encourage ‘black hat’ thinking.

Ultimately, whilst a resilient system may seek to “bounce back” after a disaster, an antifragile system seeks to “bounce forward”. From personal and professional realms, antifragility has a lot to add to our worldview.