A different look into antifragility and leadership

And just when I thought that I had a fairly good grasp of leadership jargon, I came across a new word for me: “antifragility”.

A new term in the language of leadership and management is always welcome, just like a newborn baby in a family.

The more you knead dough, the tougher it gets

The thing with antifragility is that similar paradigms can already be found elsewhere.

Such a case is when you knead dough.

Those making bread at home are familiar with the fact that dough has some “weird” properties.

One of these properties is that, the more you knead dough, the tougher it gets.

Bread dough is a seemingly fragile material.

You would normally expect that, the more you knead and stretch it, the weaker and more fragile it becomes.

On the contrary, instead of becoming weaker, it gets tougher and doubles in size.

How strange is that!

Therefore, I believe that, in order for a leader to adopt an antifragile attitude, he or she should be capable of acting similarly to dough.

This means that no “kneading”, “beating”, or “stretching” in the workplace should be able to “weaken” them.

Such a hard treatment should help them become tougher and rise, just like dough does after being knead mercilessly.

A point to stress is that, in order for dough to become tougher after being knead, it is essential to contain yeast that has already been activated.

When the yeast contained in dough has not been activated, the dough will not grow like a living organism, or it will literally take ages for it to do so.

Similarly, leaders should already have some form of “activated yeast” inside them, otherwise they won’t be able to bounce back after hard treatment and rise to higher levels of performance and achievement.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Who hasn't heard this phrase before?

It’s one of those phrases that people use when nothing has helped them in addressing a problem, no matter how many measures they have taken, and how much effort, money, and time they have spent.

Then, people use phrases like this, and others, such as: “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going”, to show that survival can be the only desirable and acceptable outcome in critical situations, which ultimately determines success.

I think that antifragility fits well in this context, since it encapsulates an inherent element of survival as a concept.

In fact, the whole idea of antifragility goes even further, because, once survival has been ensured, continuous and literally “ruthless” improvement should be the step that follows right after.

If this does not happen, and the aspect of improvement is overlooked, based perhaps on the false assumption that a leader and his or her team and organization can now rest on their laurels, there is a great risk of going back to level 1, losing any competitive advantage gained from adopting an approach that strongly favors antifragility, and having to struggle with the same, or even worse, nightmares as a leader.

To aggravate things, competitors are lurking around the corner for an opportunity to spot your weaknesses, and literally finish you off.

Therefore, embracing antifragility in leadership is not only a long-term approach to survival and success, but also, and more importantly, a deeply-rooted mindset that evolves into a lifelong habit; literally, a way of living.

Sources and further reading:

How to leverage antifragility to overcome leadership challenges

Antifragility-Wikipedia

Anti-Fragility: Definition, Overview, FAQ