In Greek mythology, the great Hercules had to perform 12 labors as a penance of the terrible crimes that he had committed. One of the labors was to kill Hydra. It was a serpent-like monster that had many heads. If you cut off one hydra head, two more would grow back in its place.

The more heads you cut, the more the heads would grow up. The more you try to kill it, the more it would get stronger. Harm is what it likes. In fact, it feeds on it. It looks forward to it.

Hydra represents antifragility. It’s a word that has been on my mind lately. And is quite relevant in the current times.

The word Antifragile was popularised by Nasim Taleb who wrote a book by the same name Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder.

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile.

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet.”

Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.

BTW, antifragile is different than Robust. Robust is something that neither gains nor loses from stressors, shocks, and volatility.

Let me demonstrate it visually

When put under stress

Anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is anti-fragile.

Human body is a great example of anti fragility.

• Bones get denser when periodic stress is applied to them
• When you lift weights in the gym, you stress your muscles. The next time your body adapts to lift heavier weights
• When you deprive your body of food or water for a limited time, your body toughens up.

A moderate amount of stress (of a specific kind) is actually good for the human body.

As I was reading the book, I couldn’t help wondering about antifragility in the context of organizations. Could there be organizations that position themselves to gain from disorder, stressors, and shocks? What would such an organization look like? How would they be doing differently than the fragile ones? And most importantly, could we become an antifragile org?

One company that comes to mind when thinking about an antifragile organization is Microsoft. Their stock seems to be soaring even in this pandemic. I am putting my money on them becoming the be first company in the world to hit $2 Trillion. You should read this fantastic analysis by our very own @Nemo911 on twitter - https://twitter.com/Nemo911/status/1258424581083131905

But even more remarkable than the stock surge is the way the company has kept pace with the changing times whether its the movement to cloud, moving away from windows operating system or embracing the developer ecosystem and the open-source. Satya Nadela’s book Hit Refresh is an amazing read on how he brought about this transformation. In his book, he writes about the cultural changes he undertook and how a change in mindset brought about a change in the way the world looked at them.

Turns out that even a 30-year-old company can rediscover its soul if it’s ready to change its mindset. It’s a powerful reminder of the need to have an antifragile mindset.

Seems to me that before an organization can become an antifragile org, the team needs to develop an anti fragile mindset. It’s something worth pondering over. Especially in times like these.

Best,
Kaddy

PS - If you haven’t read Taleb’s books, you definitely should. They will change the way you see the world.

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