What does ‘antifragile’ mean?

Antifragile book cover

We are living through a time of extraordinary change. And like the growth of Covid-19, the rate of that change is still accelerating.

To live navigate these changes we can’t simply do more of what worked in the past. We need a new approach to leading ourselves, and others, through times of change.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s third book provides a hint of what this new approach might look like. In it, he invents a new word: ‘antifragile’.

Summarising his argument, Taleb says that:

  • Things, people, and organisations that break under stress we call ‘fragile
  • Things, people, and organisations that do not break under stress we call ‘strong’,robust’, or ‘resilient’
  • So let’s invent a new word for things, people, and organisations that actually become stronger under stress. And let’s call this word: “anti-fragile”

The Churning, Inner Leadership describes a framework and a set of tools that you can use to become antifragile: able not only to survive the changes that are coming but actually to use those changes to become stronger and more inspired.

Because only when our response to any new challenge is simply to use it to become clearer about what we most want and more inspired to achieve it — only then will this time of Churning will come to an end.

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Would you find it useful to be able to use new challenges to become clearer about what you most want and more inspired to achieve that?


Adapted from The Churning, Inner Leadership: a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in a time of change.

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You can buy the book here and the workbook here.

(And remember: you can’t learn to swim just by reading about swimming, you also need to do the practice.)


Photo By Gene Ng via StockPholio.net

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