Antifragility

Developed by Asger Fuhr Høyer

Antifragility or antifragile is a way of thinking develop by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In his book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder Taleb talks and discusses the concept of antifragility and how it has impacted our lives.

To understand antifragility it is important to know that it is viewed as the opposite of fragile or fragility.

• Fragile things or systems are delicate and frail, Taleb uses a box of glasses as an example in his book. The fragile does not endure impacts, changes or stressors.
• Antifragile things or systems that needs to be hit with various events, changes and stressors. The antifragile not only endure stressors and events but learn and become stronger because of them.

As the title of the book says, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. That means that an antifragile system keeps getting better as a system but also at repelling and surviving uncertainties and unkowns. The antifragile system adapts and learns and this way it will always improve and be better today than how it was yesterday. It could be thought of as a learning by doing system.

The usage of antifragility is broad because the antifragile thinking can be applied to a great variety of systems and organisations. The focus of this article will be on project, program and portfolio management (PPPM) and here the antifragile thinking can be very impactful.

PPPM is a place very unkowns, uncertainty and risk is constantly dealt with, therefore the antifragile thinking would give PPPM systems and organisations a new perspective to view their setup and planning. The antifragile system thrives when hit with unkowns, uncertainty and risk because it learns and adapts. Simply put this would mean that what was a risk today will not be tomorrow, doing this enough times and the antifragile system can handle more and more of the risks we face today and be ready for the risks of tomorrow.

The concept of being antifragile

The idea of being antifragile is to be the opposite of fragile by following the thought process of Nassim Nicholas Taleb who created the concept of Antifragile.

First let us look at what is it to be fragile in this setting. The fragile items or systems break when they are mishandled, e.g. a house of cards do not like when the wind blows next to it. So the fragile is situations and items that can easily be damaged if we are not careful.

How do you protect a fragile system? If we look at the house of cards example again, then the door could be closed so no wind could enter. The door is then our robust shell, it will keep the wind out and the house of cards will not trip over as long as the door is closed. Well, that is until our younger sibling comes running through the living room swinging his new badminton racket right into the house of cards.

What do the example tell us? By looking at the house of cards we cannot protect it by putting up 1 robust safety barrier, we would need 1 for each scenario that happens if the cards should keep forming the house. But want did I learn from the situation? That I will build my house of cards in my own room the next time. This lesson means I have improved and learned from a negative impacting scenario. Next time it will be harder to trip over the house of cards. That is the antifragile system, the antifragile wants to be pushed, it wants to receive impacts and chaos both negative and positive, that is the way it learns and improves. That is why Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls antifragile the opposite of being fragile.

The antonym of “fragile” is not robustness or resilience, but “please mishandle” or “please handle carelessly,” using an example from Taleb when referring to sending a package full of glasses by post. - Terje Aven

"...something that is robust merely tolerates adverse or unexpected conditions, whereas something that is antifragile thrives—its performance actually improves." - Robert W. Lucky

Being antifragile is for a system to not only withstand or endure chaos, stress and high-impact events but to improve and upgrade itself because of these impacts. By looking at a system to be antifragile it adapts to the surroundings, and it is here that the antifragile system changes from the robust system. The robust system can withstand high-impacts and will not break when negative scenarios happen but neither will it take in the possitve impacts or scenarios, it will never improve before the whole system is changed. The antifragile system learns from the impacts, negative and possitive, and thus becomes stronger with each hit it takes.

"The antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means— crucially— a love of errors, a certain class of errors." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

To understand and use the aspects of antifragility it is important to remember it is the opposite of fragile. The chaos has to be around an hit the antifragile system or else it will not improve. The concept of antifragility is developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and discussed in his books, Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan and Antifragility. In his book Antifragility, Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about the idea and thoughts of the antifragility. From the book a defenition of antifragile is found:

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. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The antifragile thinking can be used in many aspects and on many systems. For this article the use of antifragile thinking in project, program and portfolio managment will analysed. This is not the only use of antifragility and if interested the reader will be able to find many more uses and aspects of antifragility.

How to create an antifragile system?

Because of antifragility being this state a system can be in, it can be applied to multiple systems in very different aspect. Just think about how it was described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb using muscles that regenerate themselves and becoming stronger, a Hydra growing two new heads when one i cut off, restaurants competing to improve food and service, all these are different complex and organic systems. The antifragile system as a concept idea can be applied to a multitude of systems because the defining factor is not the antifragile concept but whether or not the system can accomodate to being antifragile, that is to improve when affected by events.

This antifragile thinking can be a bit confusing when we are thinking of systems, but think of it as a learning by doing situation. If the system cannot learn it cannot be antifragile. Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes it as the mechanical, noncomplex vs. the organic, complex. This means that system has to be organic before it can be antifragile. Following this thought process is a good way to look at the system wished to adapt to become antifragile. Eventhough this is a general rule there will of course be found mechanical systems/components/something else that will prove this rule wrong, but thinking about the system in an organic way helps to give the manager an idea if it is possible to make antifragile.

Using the antifragile system in Project, Program and Portfolio Management

Starting a new project has a great deal of unknown and "has a posibility to happen" scenarios. In the first steps of planning the project, the project manager might have done a Gantt Chart, a Stage-Gate Model, an FMEA analysis and used other planning and risk tools for planning the time line and the steps of the project as well as dealing with the scenario that could happen. Using these tools create a more robust project but events will happen, some foreseen and some might suddenly hit and create an unwanted situation. Eventhough we have become better at identifying the unkowns and how to deal with them It is still a very important and often occurring (also reoccurring) event for manager of projects, programs and portfolios are dealing with risk and the uncertain aspects of when or how something will happen . Protecting their projects and making them able to respond to threats and survive the negative events is a big part of managing projects, programs and portfolios. It is here that the antifragile system enters the picture.

"At the core of antifragility is the conviction that planning is, to a large extent, futile, as unforeseeable events keep destroying our carefully laid out plans and detailed schedules." - Article, Complexity management for projects, programmes, and portfolios

An antifragile system thrives in disorder and with stressors. Therefore the antifragile system is the ideal match for venturing out into the unknown. It is important to note however that being antifragile does not solve all solutions and antifragility is an idea and a state a project can be in, it still requires planning, errors, and a lot of learning by doing (maybe even burning) to keep the antifragile system afloat.

Implementing the antifragile idea

When working with Project, Program and Portfolio Management the implementation of the antifragile concept can be difficult to handle. There is as such no list to follow on how to make an antifragile system, being antifragile is a state the system is in when outside actions and impacts have a positive effect on the system.

In order to work towards being antifragile the article Complexity management for projects, programmes, and portfolios proposes 5 rules to follow:

• Rule 1: Think of projects as human bodies, not machines.
• Rule 2: Create project portfolios that can collectively learn from the others' mistakes.
• Rule 3: Small projects and project teams are efficient.
• Rule 4: Fail often, fail cheaply.
• Rule 5: Project managers must have real skin in the game.

The 5 rules can be used by managers to work towards becoming more antifragile.

Benefits of the antifragile thinking

Has the concept of antifragile really anything to do in it, and is everything not yet covered by the robust, resilient and responsive systems? According to the following qoute by Terje Arven the concept of antifragility brings something new and important to risk analysis.

"...antifragile concept adds an important contribution to the current practice of risk analysis by its focus on the dynamic aspects of risk and performance, and the necessity of some variation, uncertainties, and risk to achieve improvements and high performance at later stages." - Terje Arven

By using the antifragile concept the manager (of projects, of risk calculation or just the decisionmaker) will be able improve the robust, resilient and responsive systems in order for them to react to new events by learning of previous events. It might sound simple that we should use the experience previously learned but building a system that takes events in and improves of them is what gives the antifragile system thinking a step above the others when dealing with complexity and uncertainty.

So why should the good, robust and working system implement the antifragile thinking? The antifragile thinking should be applied because of the impact it gives not today but tomorrow (and further into the future).

"Crucially, if antifragility is the property of all those natural (and complex) systems that have survived, depriving these systems of volatility, randomness, and stressors will harm them. They will weaken, die, or blow up." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

By following what Taleb says, then in the long run the antifragile thinking will surpass the robust, resilient and responsive systems because it adapts to the future.

Limitations of the antifragile

Antifragile systems and antifragility are a new way to look at systems. It is a new to think about how projects, systems and organisations are set up. Being this new there is still much to explore and more opportunities to discover as well as limitations to the thinking.

When the concept is met for the first time it is easy to be very excited and think that the solution to many problems and especially complex systems is found. Using the thinking of creating antifragile is also very nice but it does have some limitations to it.

• How do you implement the antifragile system?

Implementing, creating and finding the antifragile system can still be an unclear process. Not only can the process be unclear it can also be difficult and requires the whole system to work together. Applying antifragility to an already existing system will take time and it might not be possible for the system to survive as it is known now. The next limitation will discuss this more deeply.

• For the antifragile system to run, there is a need for sacrifice.

As mentioned in the beginning of the article fragile is important to understand the antifragile. For the antifragile system to work as an antifragile system it has to learn from errors, this means that sometimes parts of the system will be removed or destroyed for the rest improve and become even better. Taleb mentions Antifragility for one is fragility for someone else and ...sacrifices of some units ... are often necessary for the well-being... So be prepared that when having the antifragile thinking parts of the system might need to be sacrificed to improve the rest, and you do not always decide what.

• The antifragile system can become fragile (or maybe just robust and resilient) again

The antifragile system needs to have a learning process and if the system should stay antifragile the learning process must continue because we do not know what the future will bring. The whole idea behind the antifragile system is that it will be able to handle the unknowns if it does not learn it will not be able to handle the unkown. This mean that at some point an antifragile system might become fragile again if it stops learning. This is important to remember when building and maintaining the system.

These are 3 important limitations to the antifragile system that should be noted when starting to work with the antifragile thinking and antifragile systems. But who knows, maybe antifragility will adapt and learn from them and overcome them in the end?

Annotated Bibliography

• The book Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the key to this article and I encourage the reader to read more about antifragility and how it affects the world. Furthermore Taleb has written in an entertaining and different way which makes the book fun as well as interesting.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Penguin Books

• Terje Aven has written a good article where he discussed the implications of antifragility and the impacts it can have.

Terje Aven, The Concept of Antifragility and its Implications for the Practice of Risk Analysis, 2015, Risk Analysis, Vol. 35, No. 3

• Here the reader can learn more about the complexity of managing projects but what is more important learn something about the antifragile thinking.

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/complexity-management-projects-programmes-portfolios-10674 , Oehmen, J., Thuesen, C., Ruiz, P. P., & Geraldi, J. (2015). Complexity management for projects, programmes, and portfolios: An engineering systems perspective. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2015—EMEA, London, England. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.