To be an anti-fragile leader you have to focus on the desired results and not on the solution.
There are two threats to anti-fragility today, excessive stress on the system and insufficient or no recovery.
It is worth being small, less is more, self-leadership (distributed leadership understood from the self-leadership of people) generates a more important and impacting guerrilla war. An anti-fragil system is composed of smaller, fragile parts, because you generate agility (easier to adapt being small than big) and lasting flexibility.
By developing an internal response to stress and variability, in short periods of time it develops like our skeleton; the bones, are kept strong by the limited stress to which we subject them.
Generating redundancy to prosper, efficiency is not the main objective, or should not be in an organization, it is a panic mission in many situations when we have external stressors. The goal is to thrive in uncertainty with layered redundancy. The human body has redundancy, two lungs, two kidneys, for that reason, if one of them fails, we will continue to live, which is the purpose of the human body. The same happens to us or to organizations, if we generate redundancy (something that at first may seem an extra cost) we have optionality and we expand our capacity for survival.
Generating traditions, rituals, about a shared purpose, makes us endure over time and if the purpose changes over time, the traditions adapt and change according to the new purpose. For this we have to be aware of the relationship between purpose - mission - vision and principles - values - behaviors. Traditions are incorporated and internalized through habits, rituals and repetitive behaviors. We have to be aware of the relationship between purpose - rituals and if one of them changes we identify its implication in the other part.
Generating duality, with security in certain areas (core ours or the company's) and small many risks in other areas, will allow us to learn, adapt, inspect and survive with open options.
For this purpose, the negative option, identifying the disadvantages of the options and minimizing or decreasing them, helps to generate value. Instead of adding more and more things to something, product, service, life thinking about improving, we should first eliminate the things that are not needed, that make us fragile, subtracting habits, practices, etc. Later on, we will stabilize and see what value we generate with each incorporation, whenever it is necessary, less is more.
Every action and opinion has to be the result of the consequences of involvement and involvement in our actions. We should not give recommendations or opinions on things that we are not committed to, but simply involved in, or at least that pose a risk to others through our actions.
To do this our conscience must be aware, we must activate our conscience, one way to activate it is :
- Knowing why we do it
- How things happen now
- How we want it to happen in the future
- What makes it stay in place
- What reinforces you in your attitude or behavior
- How to contribute
This awareness is activated by working on the consequences of the acts, which can be known and spoken, known but ignored, unknown but known or unknown and unknowable.
In identifying such consequences we should always, whenever possible, move towards known and spoken consequences, all else being exponential risk taking. The difference in moving towards known and spoken consequences is that we will identify the risks and mitigate them, we will have been exposed to them for a short or known period and improving, otherwise the level of stress that we consciously assume can make us fragile with no option of survival.
- What happens if we do?
- What if we don't?
- What doesn't happen if we do?
- What doesn't happen if we don't?
- From what perspective do we see this consequence?
- How far do these consequences go?
- In what time frame does it take place?
-What possible side effects can there be?
- Who else may be affected or involved?
-In what time frame does it affect? Short - Medium - Long term.
