Fire from ice: The case for building organisational anti-fragility

What if there were an alternative way to respond? What if there was a way to turn ice into fire and change the dynamics of the entire situation? So, instead of panicking, you could build up a fire and use it for warmth and cook food. You can do so by simply using the ice to create a lens through which you can start a fire. In so doing, you move from being a victim to a survivor.

We live in a VUCA world

Crisis is change and change is a catalyst, and no more so than in a VUCA world. VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Volatility means change; uncertainty means we don’t have perfect information; complexity is not complication; an aircraft’s engine is complicated, but you can always get an expert with the right tools to sort it out. The rain forest, on the other hand, is complex and all you can do is to adapt and coexist with it. Ambiguity is our inability to see so far ahead, and what this means is that you stay present and focus on what’s in your control.

At the time when we were all reeling in 2020, the United States saw 4.4 million new businesses start up. Those people turned ice into fire.

When change happens, there is always opportunity and the key lesson is to not let a good crisis go to waste because there is opportunity in crisis. Case in point is Zoom. On March 19, 2020, Zoom was trading at $130 per share. Fast forward to October 16, 2020, and that stock was trading at $559 per share. The people who took note of the change in the direction of the wind and acted on it, made a windfall.

Impediments to good decisions

We often get in our own way. We grieve the status quo for so long that we either take too long to adapt, or we don’t adapt. This is as true of individuals as it is of organisations. Businesses go out of business because they don’t adapt. Individuals run into trouble that alters their lives to the worst because they don’t adapt. Just as you can get lost in the woods, so can you in life.

Change creates fear. Our biology creates the impediment to progress for we are wired to respond in one of four ways: freeze, flee, flight or fawn.

So, how can individuals, leaders, and subsequently organisations, make fire from ice? What are some of tools they can employ to ensure they convert crisis into opportunity, to trade stress for strength?

Mitigating the trigger

Capable leaders develop high self-awareness, high self-knowledge, and emotional regulation. They build the capacity to lead themselves and others out of the “emotional basement” to higher levels of thinking and functioning.

As a boss, you need to remain mindful that you are constantly being watched, by your subordinates, by your boss and by people outside the organisation. If you are in a panic, your followers will be in a panic and if you are calm, so will they. Your emotional intelligence is critical to your leadership just as your ability to see and understand what other people are experiencing and doing.

As a leader, you can mitigate the trigger with one or more of the following:

• Belief about change: You have a choice to either catastrophize or to use positive anxiety to pursue change – fire from ice.
• Beliefs about your own competence, self-confidence, and self-agency. The more you build it up, the more you can steer in a positive direction. This capability can be developed through one or a combination of physical fitness, mastery of craft, experiences in the world, capturing the lessons, and making them as your way of being.
• Mental nourishment. One of the principles of anti-fragility is that between stimulus and reaction there is a moment. In that moment, if you catch it, lies your freedom to choose between response and reaction. How you feed your mind – stoicism, spiritual studies and/or history- can help to fill that moment and to create the necessary space that converts a reaction to a measured response.
• Practice daily. These strategies are like creating a path in the wilderness. Walking it one time barely creates an impact; do so daily and you will notice the path forms and becomes identifiable. Mitigating the triggers is a daily exercise.

Developing Anti-fragility

How can we become anti-fragile, and how can leaders propagate a culture of anti-fragility? Here are seven principles that can help you develop and build a state of anti-fragility:

• As you think, so shall you become: You are the product of your own thoughts. Our thoughts represent a destination, and we close the gap by moving towards that destination. Positive thoughts result in positive outcomes, just as the reverse is also true.
• Between stimulus and reaction, there is a moment. In that moment is your freedom to choose. The last of the human freedoms that cannot be taken away is one’s ability to choose their attitude to a situation.
• Opportunity favours the prepared.
• Thoughts, emotions, and behaviours are linked.
• The mind and the body are one.
• Fatigue makes cowards of all of us. Rest.
• The present moment is all there is. Be here now.

Nature provides us with many examples of anti-fragility. If in doubt, look at how muscles develop, memory, how we gain speed, agility, how the mind expands … etc. Anti-fragility is not a fantasy but a reality and a possibility. Developing it allows us to convert crisis into opportunity.

Today’s organisations stand to benefit from becoming anti-fragile to thrive and prosper in a world of accelerated change, amplified vulnerability, rising uncertainty, increasing complexity, and widening ambiguity. Organisations, like people, have a chance to make fire from ice. The organisations that succeed are those that are led by self-aware, emotionally intelligent, and emotionally regulated leaders. As the leader is so the organisation shall become. If you as a leader are having difficulty with the performance and output of your organisation, then look no further than the mirror.

Kamal Dimachkie, COO of ToughLove Advisors.