CHAPTER 15 LEADING IN THE AGE OF METASYSTEMS
The picture we’re painting for you in this book is a picture of the future, of companies in that future and what their DNA will be made of. Of course, there have been many images to precede this one. Each one part of our collective history, they are a picturesque palette of myriad styles and techniques, showing us what is seen as true and could be real.
If you are the head of a company, be it a startup or a multinational, or if you feel responsible for some part of a company, the picture we’ve started to paint is one that matters to you. It influences your surroundings, your future, and whether or not your own style, colors and techniques will be welcomed by lovers or booed by haters.
That’s why, being ourselves responsible for our team, our clients and our company, we’ve thought hard about what picture to paint. One about purpose, collaboration and a culture-driven way of going at it. Moving past the holistic view, another question arose: what type of leader does this morethan-for-profit company need? What type of leader can guide its company into the age of the metasystems?
Every part of our collective history has been affected – and sometimes infected – by leaders. Question is which leaders will be the ones to leave an impression in the next time slot, and the one after that. In this new picture, in this new paradigm: if we have the choice, who do we choose to lead?
Follow the leader leader
Is there such a thing as a good leader? Walk your brain back a bit, straight across eons of history. Or if not in time, then in place, right across the planet. Where do you end up? At Julius Caesar’s palace? Smoking a cigar with Churchill? Out hunting with Putin? Or maybe listening to Mandela talk about how we can bridge the gap between different cultures, or be blown away by one of Obama’s spectacular speeches, thinking “Yes I can! ”.
While it used to be God’s task to instill heavenly powers in our leaders, these days, things are different. Best case scenario, we can elect our political leaders. In business, things don’t work quite this way. There is no set protocol, there are no fixed elections. There is no democracy, either – although that doesn’t make companies dictatorships by default.
Who runs the world?
Over the centuries, many leadership styles have come and gone. However, all of them can be organized according to certain shared traits or tendencies. When assessing a leader, one of the simplest ways to gauge his style is to find out how much weight he or she attributes to people and tasks. The balance between the four possible answers to this question will leave you with an idea of the leadership style you’re dealing with. However, in scoring leaders as in most everything else, things aren’t usually as binary as the models suggest. These are stereotypes. We’re sharing them so you’ll have an idea of what leadership styles exist, but don’t feel limited by them. The future doesn’t care about caricatures, it’s about creating new kinds of doing things.
Autocratic
To this type of leader, people are less of a priority. All available attention, love and resources go to the tasks they have to perform, while the people and their wellbeing are seen as a means to an end. There may have been times when this autocratic style was the way to go but they are long gone. However, autocratic styles can be effective in times of crisis and in non-complex, stable environments.
Laissez-faire
If a leader has a lot of trust in his people and he will go out of his way not to meddle or even to intervene, you’ve got yourself a ‘laissez-faire’ type on your hands. Things happen. This leader lets them happen. And everybody hopes for the best.
Democratic
You’d almost think a Greek polis is possible in business after all. People, rules, governance, rights, votes… In this model, there is a strong focus on tasks, but the lower ranks decide on the priorities. The leader acts as an orchestrator of the will of his employees.
Transformational
This leader sees his employees as the fiber of the company. His or her main focus is to inspire his people, to make sure team members have space to grow, use all their talents and together perform as a strong, cohesive team. When the common goals are clear, everybody is inspired and committed, the team works with their best talents and the job will be done in the best way possible.
What kind of leader do you need?
Leadership is an equation with more than one variable. While leaders have a large impact on an organization, the structure they operate in matters just as much. Put an autocrat in a horizontal or bottom-up organization and you’ll see things get messy soon enough. And there are more bad choices possible. Or should we say bad combinations? After all, employees don’t choose their bosses, nor the organizational context of the company they work in. Here are the four main types of organizational structures found in companies.
Top-down
The leader is on top and everyone else stands below him in this hierarchical pyramid structure. This setup has been tested many times throughout history. At times, it has done well. Other times, it has failed us. Opt for this one when you’re tackling a crisis head-on and need to move fast. In other cases, keep in mind this is not the most durable of models.
Matrix
In this in-between model, there is hierarchy, but it doesn’t trickle down in the same way as in the top-down model. Instead, there are several parallel swim streams, each with their own mini-version of the top-down approach. Each of these directs its efforts towards one central point. While this model seems friendlier than the one above, it’s still firmly aimed towards a single focal point and is quite complex to run.
Bottom-up
Upside down and inside out, this model spreads the power around. It gives access to resources, is based on decision-making, and founded on debate and dialogue. All of it stems right from the roots. The way forward is dictated from the bottom up. Consensus finds its way to the higher regions and these follow the directions decided upon down under.
Network
Instead of one big arrow pointing upwards or a cluster in which the bottom defines the action, this model has arrows flying all around. This is collaboration at its purest. Every node in the network is equal in power and responsibility, striving for its own success – but always keeping the overall improvement of the entire network in mind.
It’s all about context
When asked what your preferred leadership style is, how do you respond? With a question, of course. You ask what needs to be led, what the situation is. You inquire about the conditions, the history, the needs, the challenges… In other words: you ask for context. A leader does not exist in a vacuum. He or she needs to lead something, someone, or many ‘someones’ in a certain day and age. All these ingredients have to be identified in order to answer the question.
Our context, right now, is a rather pressing one. Our relationship with time, with technology, with nature and with our fellow humans is under pressure. The world is asking us questions, pregnant ones. And we are finding out that the old answers won’t do anymore.
Our context is also a liminal one. We are in a transformational in-between space, where the old is dying, but we’re afraid to let go, and the new isn’t born yet, because we don’t dare to imagine it. That makes our context scary, but at the same time exciting and interesting. Furthermore, our current predicament is unprecedented, meaning we are left without any templates salvaged from the history books. Be that as it may, only by being aware of all that has been tried and tested can we formulate our own way forward.
Our ever-changing context asks for a leap of faith. A “we don’t know what’s out there, but together we dare to march forward” mindset. However, to get people moving in the dark, you need a very specific type of leader. One that is trustworthy enough to guide them through uncertainty and maybe even inspire them to enjoy themselves while doing so. You need a leader who is not afraid to admit the old answers don’t suffice anymore. The kill-the-competition, nature is ours to fiddle with, dollar signs in the eyes type have become increasingly passé. Today, we need people with courage to maneuver us past this one-dimensional story, towards more than for profit companies that make for good cornerstones of the arising metasystems.
INTERVIEW
THE POWER OF ADAPTIVE RESILIENCE ON THE BATTLEFIELD AND IN BUSINESS
AN INTERVIEW WITH STIJN SWIJNS (FORMER SPECIAL FORCES OPERATOR AND FOUNDER OF MISSIONME) AND P (WHOSE NAME CANNOT BE SHARED FOR SECURITY REASONS)
What does a former Special Forces operator know about running a business? Quite a lot, actually. Stijn founded MissionMe, with the support of P, a company that helps people and leaders build resilience. As it turns out, the parallels between business strategy and warfare are very useful in trying to navigate the new world.
In any strategy, leadership can make or break your plan. The way you conceive of power, the processes you put in place, how you lead others through trying times, what attitude you have while doing it… All these elements are crucial, especially in complex environments. There is a time and place for “command and control”, but that only applies when dealing with linear environments. In a complex environment, though, this proves to be a less appropriate and effective form of leadership.
“In the Special Forces, we have to deal with high levels of stress, acute consequences, and complex environments. That’s the reality we must know how to confront. Normally the army is in a constant “command and control” mode but sometimes it shouldn’t be. We should switch to a more “communicate and coordinate” mode, less top-down, as decision-making simply cannot keep up to the pace of information. The pace of information overloads the command and control model – the cracks are rapidly observed – as demonstrated by most, if not all, top-down organizations.”
“Create simple plans for complex settings.”
In complex environments, Stijn and P cite Colin Gray for applying “strategic vision” rather than “strategic effect”. “There is often too much fog and too much friction in complex environments. You just don’t know what’s going to happen next, therefore have clear vision rather than a clear sought after-effect. In the Special Forces, our legacy is to prioritize capability over rank in anticipation of reality. Reality does not have much time for formalities. It is only an army at peace that functions with such superficial tasking and responsibility – for the sake of order and predictability. The army competes in its domain against no-one, until it is at war. Then procedures and formalities are dropped rapidly as reality is too complex. A business however is never really at peace, therefore it is more similar to an army at war, finding allies and outmaneuvering to survive and grow. One needs a system that incentivizes its people to be as much as they can be.”
Focus on ‘anti-knowledge’ and imagination
As German sociologist Ulrich Beck puts it: “In the face of the unknown future, imagination is knowledge.” As a business, you need to be more aware of what you don’t know. Stijn and P: “We should stop focusing too much on what we know, it’s what we think we know that keeps us from learning. Whenever you make a plan or think about an end result, you should keep in mind that you are largely ignorant… and act accordingly.”
However, we know a whole lot more if we partner up. “Joining forces has the benefit of combining knowledge, but also to stimulate each other’s imagination. The more combined knowledge you have, the more energy you have to enter the space of imagination; which in some sense is the actualization of knowledge. Reaching a certain level of knowledge allows you to make certain connections, and wander out into the unknown with a solid conceptual foundation.”
“The more combined knowledge you have, the more energy you have to enter the space of imagination.”
Within the Special Forces, there is someone responsible for ‘lessons learned’. “That person takes what people have learned, gathered and understood and redistributes the knowledge. That way, we bear in mind the past, but we don’t let it guide us. What we did on a mission in Iraq isn’t necessarily the template for an operation in the Sahel.” Experience is a double-edge sword, and often acts as a false prophet. “Relying on the past and previous experiences is what has caused some of our biggest mistakes.”
Trust is the beginning of everything
Do people need to prove or maintain the trust you give them? Or can you find ways to grow this trust more naturally? According to both military men, you should trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy. “In Special Forces, we spend a lot of time together. We run, shoot, have tactical training, go on fast boats and jump out of helicopters. And all of this, we do together. That forges a natural bond, trust increases – something the business world will have a hard time competing with.”
This doesn’t only count for team members, it’s exactly the same for leaders. “If you come in as a leader in our Special Forces unit and you’re with us on the shooting range, you can’t hide. You’re tested all the time, and if you can’t walk your talk, you’ll be discredited. This creates a more genuine form of leadership.” Translation: businesspeople would do well to struggle through rough patches together with their team more often. They should work together in situations where they need each other’s help to see what other people can provide. This way, trust, camaraderie and brotherhood are built through blood, sweat and sand.
P: “I see people working at desks. They work together, granted. But all they do is have a drink after work, sipping coffee with their legs crossed. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t create a feeling of being ready for anything, nor the assurance that your colleague would take a bullet for you. We have become quite comfortable and sensitive to disorder. But if you can build a team the way we do in the army, you have a very powerful potential unit on your hands.”
Adaptive resilience is what you need
A lot of people define resilience as a ‘bounce-back-ability’. It’s not just about that, though. P: “If I knock you over, you stand back up. Great, but then I can just knock you over again. Is that resilience? No. If I get knocked over, I change my posture, I adapt my position, I move my guard, I take a certain distance. I’m constantly responding to my threat, repositioning to be more ready. Not just for this particular threat, but for anything. Within a Special Forces unit, everyone needs to be able to take over the leader role at any given moment. Adaptive resilience plays on all levels within our group.”
“We try to prioritize capability over rank. This acts as an incentive to be as much as you can be.”
But before anything, cooperation is what you should go for. In Co-opetition, Adam M. Brandenburger argues that business shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. The book cites example upon example of situations where companies would’ve both gained if only they’d worked with each other instead of against each other. “In the military, we work together with the development sector, the humanitarian sector, the diplomatic sector, local businesses, etcetera. That’s the network we need to accomplish our goals. Even when we don’t see exactly how we could cooperate at first, we know we will see connections between what both parties are doing if we spend enough time with a potential partner.”
In the army, a lot of different elements have to work together, whether they are in a chosen partnership or an imposed one. “We have the air space, the ground space, the satellite space, the sub-terrain space with divers and so forth. Those are a lot of pieces to function in one coordinated whole. Things can go wrong quickly, and when they do, they cause a whole cascade of ramifications. So, the more pieces there are, the simpler we make the plan. This only works if there is trust, as trust is what keeps a simple plan together. If partners act in accordance to the values they share, and this vision is bigger than their own interests, they can go really far together.”
STIJN AND P.’S TIPS:
•Create simple plans for complex settings or collaborations to allow for the cognitive space to adapt rapidly.
•Find partners who complement your knowledge gaps. Engaging in metasystems can help unleash the power of imagination.
•Think about relevant cohesion activities with your potential partners to create deeper bonds – beyond the bar and beer. Step out together into uncomfortable spaces, nobody likes to be vulnerable, yet it is in these places where the most trust is built.
So what do CEOs do, exactly?
We’ve discussed the different styles leaders – CEOs – have and what context they operate in, but we haven’t looked at what they apply that style to. What do CEOs do, precisely? What tasks lie there gathering dust when they are out on vacation? We’ve listed seven of the most common tasks and responsibilities of business leaders which we’d like to submit to a little critical reflection. Given the changes and challenges knocking our status quo out of balance, which of these will stand the test of time?
Looking at changes and challenges, we are well aware a very big chunk of them are infused by technological development. When people are hesitant about new technologies, a very common concern is that ‘robots will take over their jobs’. And while that might sound sci-fi-ish, only a fool would laugh off such a remark. Automation isn’t the future, it has become a fact. In factories, schools and businesses around the world, certain tasks are already being delegated to technology. Should leaders or CEOs fear becoming obsolete, too?
The type of tasks that technology aces, are the optimization tasks. The ones focused on efficiency, on continuous improvement, on repetition, on processing existing information faster, at a lower error rate. Technology is – at least for now – very binary, organized, and quantitative. It can organize a mess of data into something that looks like a planning or a workflow in no time. Complex calculations, percentages and routines are a piece of cake for the algorithms. However, technology can’t think in exceptions. Neither can it experience an energy or company culture. It doesn’t have a gut feeling. In fact, it completely lacks any sense of emotional intelligence. Technology, in short, doesn’t have a reason ‘why’ to do things. It just does as it’s told.
The leader of the future, though, the one leading us beyond profit and into metasystems, is a leader who knows why. Why his or her company exists and what purpose it serves. With the soft side of business becoming increasingly important, so will the tasks and responsibilities of the CEOs who are more creative and not translatable into an and-or-not matrix.
Looking back at the seven tasks listed earlier, we’ll need to update them with the ones we need to build and maintain our metasystem. Praise the lord, the CEO will show his worth in this department. Because to build metasystems, you need a very human, non-binary, heartfelt and why-driven look on things.
Being a responsible human
To guide a team or company into the unknown doesn’t require you to continuously improve what you’ve already been doing. Rather, it requires creativity. And creativity is discontinuity, it’s leapfrogging, it’s thrashing about, believing the magic will happen when you combine all the right, unexpected elements. Technology cannot take over the creative part (yet), but it can help increase efficiency, saving you time and relieving employees in all ranks from repetitive tasks. Welcome it. Let technology increase efficiency so that you have more time to pursue your goals. Your goal should be to increase quality. The quality of your product, sure, but more importantly the quality of your relations, the quality of your team’s wellbeing, and of their life on the whole.
AI isn’t about the robots beating humans. This revolution will be about humans having more time to be human. AI will give leaders more freedom. It will carve out some wiggle room, allowing leaders to focus on their responsibilities, especially the ones in the “connecting” and “inspiration” department below. Leave the boring, repetitive tasks to the machines. This means more time for CEOs to do what they are good at: build trust, inspire others, define the strategy. But also: designing and running a metasystem and going out to connect with others, telling them all about their plans.
9 RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CONNECTED CEO
|
Inspiration |
Performance |
Connecting |
|
Determine |
Oversee and deliver the |
Connector |
|
Determine the |
Allocate resources |
Co-Architect of |
|
Build the company |
Juggle with everyday |
Be the face |
So maybe, thanks to technology, the leaders of the future may be the ones who have the luxury and the time to focus on the why. We need them to be reliable and at the same time unpredictable. We need them to be as human as possible. And AI just might be the secret potion to make magic happen, to give us more time.
The to-do list of the future
We’ve been scavenging inspiration in nature and in other business models like the commons. We’ve ploughed through the phenomenon of trust. Out of all this research, we can distill a set of to-dos for tomorrow’s leaders, today.
The “Connected” leader:
•Has a clear purpose and knows how to translate it to the whole company as well as the world beyond.
•Builds the strategic direction with his team, the “45 degrees” that matter.
•Has a well-developed radar for innovation. Goes out to explore. Goes to places he’s never been before, talks to people he doesn’t know. Gets off the beaten track.
•Allows for an absence of hierarchy. Understands the company will not go bankrupt just because of a little freedom and self-governance. Knows some issues might even be fixed without him or her having to lift a finger.
•Actively seeks participation and cooperation.
•Balances male and female energy.
•Thinks in solutions rather than problems.
•Is a deep listener.
•Is transparent, even about the things he or she doesn’t want to be transparent about.
•And, most importantly, leads with trust and creates an environment where trust reigns.
Leader or leaders
We talked a lot about “the” leader, but in most companies a CEO works closely with his board of directors, who wield some of the power as well. The three primary functions of a board of directors are strategic direction, governance, and accountability. These past decades, boards have tended to focus a lot on governance, control and risk management, meanwhile forgetting about strategy. This is even more true for listed companies, specifically those in the financial industries who, faced with stricter regulations, have redoubled their efforts in the compliance department.
For boards who are ready, willing and able to adapt and assume their responsibility, here are three main areas to work on.
1. Strategy
Boards should discuss strategy more often and adopt a broader view of the subject. It is generally accepted that the pendulum has to swing back from too much control to more strategy. The challenge for boards will be to strengthen their knowledge on digital strategies, new and sustainable business models, metasystem thinking and how to make a positive societal impact a core concern for the company. Most boards are well-versed in best practices of the past, but need to accelerate the learning curve on new thinking. Their biggest challenges are to maintain a long-term view and to start incorporating all the stakeholders in their thinking. While multi-stakeholder thinking is widespread in Europe and Asia, it has yet to be adopted by most Anglo-Saxon companies. The latter’s emphasis on shareholders and quarterly results creates a not-too-healthy tunnel vision, which is precisely what you don’t need for future-proof strategies.
2. The right senior management team
One of the most difficult roles of a board is to appoint a CEO and a senior management team. And once they’re past that endeavor, they’ll need the stamina to coach that CEO night and day. That’s why it’s crucial for a board to reflect on Picking The Right Person. Not just in general: what they’re after is the right person in a given structure in a certain context and as part of a defined strategy. The whole shebang.
3. Bring the outside in
Board members – and especially non-executive board members – shouldn’t be confined to their advisory role on the board. Why not cast them a double role as evangelists? Choose them wisely so they can bring the outside in and you’ll be able to benefit from their network. This might make their role more important as well as more useful, and it ups the number of non-executives you need to build a metasystem. In fact, a board member could be a perfect candidate to be a broker of trust.
INTERVIEW
WORKING IN METASYSTEMS FITS THE CURRENT ZEITGEIST
AN INTERVIEW WITH JURGEN INGELS, FOUNDER OF CLEAR2PAY
We were pleased to speak to Jurgen Ingels, one of the leading voices in the startup and scale up ecosystem in Europe. Jurgen was Founder of Clear2Pay, a leading payments technology company. Under his leadership, he grew the company to one of the world leaders in payment software with more than 1,200 employees in 14 countries and successfully sold the business to FIS for $400 million in October 2014. Today Jurgen is still an active entrepreneur, investor and board member.
We’re moving from vertical to horizontal integration
“In the past, companies were trying to integrate vertically, they wanted to control the full value chain. Now smaller companies focus on what they’re good at and then they find other companies to partner with, in a horizontal way, often through technology and open API’s (Application Programming Interface). I believe those networked companies are the way forward, not a market of big conglomerates who consolidate but many different ecosystems of (smaller) organizations who work together in an agile & independent way. It’s part of the current ‘zeitgeist’.”
Sharing has become the norm for young people to create value
The way you create value as a person or leader in an organization is totally different than before. It’s much more about the connections you make than about the knowledge you have. In the past you were important for a company if you had relevant information people were looking for. The more people had to come to you, the more important you were. Younger people have a different mindset today, they feel important by sharing information instead of keeping things to themselves. Knowledge has become a commodity, sharing became the asset. The mindset of sharing will become a more and more universal principle to create value. Even large business deals will happen more and more in open book format where the numbers will be on the table in a transparent way. Startups already have that ‘sharing as default’ mindset, now it’s up to the corporates.
“Your network is 100 times more important than your expertise.”
Who you know is much more important than what you know today, because the “what you know” is findable online. The relative power of knowledge has dropped since the rise of the Internet, as a consequence your network is 100 times more important than the knowledge you have. It’s the network that allows you to move forward when you’re facing a challenge, so you need to put effort into building and maintaining your network.
“The network is always right.”
Your network is also the perfect way to get feedback about ideas, people or companies you want to work with, etc. The network provides the foundation for the trust you need to engage in another relationship. Make sure to invest time in it; think when and where you can show attention. It can be as simple as sending a text message for a birthday.
We need to get out of our comfort zone to build trust
We will see an increase in activities where business leaders work together out of their comfort zone. Last year I went biking with a group of 20 CEOs and it’s during those moments that you get to know each other very well. You see the strengths and weaknesses of one another and during those long rides you have different kinds of conversations than those in a meeting room.
JURGEN’S TIPS:
•Knowledge has become a commodity, sharing became the asset.
•Invest time in building and maintaining your network, it’s times 100 more important than “what” you know.
•Business leaders need to engage in activities together that are out of their comfort zone.
Getting the board on board
Trust plays an important role in building metasystems, yet it isn’t always as prevalent in companies as it should be, especially not in board rooms. That makes sense, as the job of a board is usually to factor in risks, to manage the damage and to exert control. These are the guys who say things inspired like “Trust is good, control is better” or “Always focus on the checks and balances”. How do you get trust to start playing a more important role at the core of these boards? How do you massage the overly formalistic and auditing culture into an open one? We don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer to these questions. However, shifting the board’s perspective bit by bit to show them just how much trust is needed and how valuable metasystems are, can prove its worth.
Here’s an argument that might help you soften that muscle tissue. Risk management is a board’s usual comfort zone and managing financial risks is essential to run a solid business. True enough, but not the whole truth, as a lot of risks simply aren’t expressed in numbers. Some are highly invisible and near impossible to predict – but that doesn’t mean they can’t happen. Ask your board how much time they spend on understanding the impact of societal risks, sustainability, and systemic risks. How much time do they spend on calculating risks with a low probability but a high impact? How much time do they spend on the 5th floor, looking out towards the horizon?
Being part of a metasystem and involving board members in it will pave the way towards a more holistic risk but above all opportunity-assessment, as the partners in a metasystem exchange information from varied sources. Ideally, you’ll have the board members who warn for risks they know how to handle, and unusual suspect-flagging risks they might have missed. Combining their sources and expertise, they might come up with interesting solutions. This power of the metasystem to think beyond the predictable is what will make companies who partner up so much stronger in facing the unknown. You need a ‘Connected’ Board.
Where to lead to?
You now know which type of leader fits which kind of context, and you’ve understood that you’ll need to move the idea of collaboration to the core of your company to stay in the lead, including the board. But where does all this leading lead to?
Our goal, since the very first chapter, has been to elevate your relations, your network and your partners into a competitive and societal advantage. To show you that giving them more room to evolve and grow will make you stronger – not just when things are going well, but especially when times are tough.
We’d like to add a layer to this notion. What if metasystems aren’t just a way to better withstand attacks? What if metasystems actually thrived when held at gunpoint?
Lessons from the many-headed monster
Systems that flourish at times when others suffer are called ‘antifragile’. Not quite like Bruce Willis in that movie Unbreakable, but rather like Hydra, the many-headed serpent. Hydra was an ungodly creature in Greek mythology. She had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly. Each time one of Hydra’s heads was cut off in battle, two would grow back where there had been only one. Every time the beast was knifed, it grew stronger.
Antifragility isn’t just something out of mythology, though. Nassim Nicholas Taleb dedicated a whole book to the subject, called “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder”. As Taleb puts it, “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.”
Another example Taleb cites in his book is natural evolution; a process he says thrives in a volatile environment. With each shock, evolution forces life forms to transform, mutate and improve to become better suited to their environment. This strong strategy has been proven to work many times over. However, if you look more closely, you’ll notice that the individuals who evolve are in themselves rather fragile. That’s the beauty of it: in order for the system as a whole to be antifragile, most of its constituent parts must be fragile. Even better: it is precisely their fragility that makes the system stronger. There is no need for the elements – meaning all of us – to become unbeatable and operate in a constant state of war. No, quite the opposite, in fact: our collective openness to fragility is what will make the sum of us more resilient or antifragile.
For example, if the bakery shop on the corner goes bankrupt, other bakeries in the neighborhood will learn from this one bakery’s mistakes (never hold out on the crème patissière!) and grow stronger as a result of it. In other words, the successes or failures of the elements within a system act as pieces of information, telling the system precisely what works and what doesn’t.
We tend to forget about that trial and error part. As our knowledge grows, we tend to think we have the world under our thumb. Often, we think of volatility as something to be rooted out, an annoying occurrence that should be countered with more regulations. What we should remember is that we shouldn’t try and control the unpredictable, much less attempt to outrun it.
The lesson for leaders is that they should welcome anything that may be threatening, trusting that these events hold the power to make them even stronger. Your task as a leader is not to fight the unknown, but to embrace it and use it as a force for good. And for that, you’ll need to trust in your ability to navigate troubled waters, no matter what the future throws at you. Once again, trust is what it all comes down to. So let’s find out who can help you ace that part.