Antifragile Future Predictions
In our always-on, always-connected world, the start of a new year remains a time when we are inclined to think about our plans for the future. Even though our school days are long behind us, the rhythm of terms as manageable blocks of times to establish and achieve goals persists. Humans are very much creatures of habit.
Even before the disruption causes by the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2020, the words of Chris Yapp–“the more certain you are about the future the more likely you are to be wrong”–were a warning sound to anyone attempting to predict what was going to happen next. With this year only 11 years old, few of us would have predicted the events that have already taken place. Even if we had wildly speculated about their possibility, then it’s more unlikely, as with the pandemic, that action would be taken. This is not a recent issue, but we realise that our response may need to change.
As someone whose role includes aspects of futurology, there is an implied expectation that I’ll be setting out my predictions. To do so would be to set up to be wrong, so my thinking at this point has been different.
If we realise nothing else about the last year, then I expect all of us are accepting we simply cannot predict with sufficient certainty the future. That doesn’t mean we are helpless. Rather, the approach we have taken has itself been wrong. We don’t know enough or think enough about what we know, and nor do we anticipate what the consequences of change might be. We should be less concerned about what the next invention will be, rather think about what opportunities and disruptions could come about because of it–and then their implications on our systems.
Maps and Systems
The first place you need to start is the things you currently have. There are various ways that you can do this but I would suggest that looking at Simon Wardley’s mapping approach — https://medium.com/wardleymaps — is a good place to start. By spending time thinking about the things you do, the dependencies they have, and the value they bring can give you a solid understanding of your world. From this, you can apply a system thinking approach — not considering the change in isolation or as a one-off event, but as a series of interconnected events which can have multiple (and often unpredictable) consequences.
The map shows what makes up our world and as we understand the state (genesis to commodity) of the components we can then consider their stability but also their exposure to change.
The more commoditised a component is, the more stable you can expect it to be (electricity isn’t changing) but the greater the impact of disruption can be (think about how a power cut quickly moves from minor inconvenience to massive disruption).
At the other end of the scale, those components in the genesis state are much more volatile and likely to change. They can quickly become unavailable or disrupted by alternative supplies or approaches. The nature of this disruption is likely to be different–it’s less about stopping an existing activity from taking place and more creating new opportunities or enabling previously “unsolvable” problems to be solved.
With this knowledge and awareness, we can now think about what the impact on our business of change might be. It doesn’t make us any better at predicting what may change, but we are in a better place to be prepared to either defend or preferably take advantage of the opportunity.
From fragile to antifragile
Resilience has become a popular phrase in the last few years and with the constantly increasing pace of change then it is not surprising. It was Nassim Nicholas Taleb who went beyond this and introduced the idea of antifragile–things which benefit from and flourish in the state of constant change and chaos.
If we return to our map or systems diagram, we can then apply these three states (fragile, resilient, antifragile) on the components and understand the impact of change on them. For something that is in a commodity state but is fragile (like the power supply) how we make provision for the future would be very different to a component that is in a genesis state but antifragile.
This insight can also then shape our decisions–we can put things in place that will either protect or allow us to take advantage of change. Darwin expressed the idea that it is the most adaptable to change that survives–but isn’t the opportunity for a business not just to survive, but to be the one that is leading the disruption and bringing about the change? You need to have the situational awareness that comes from the mapping approach to do this. Anything else is likely to just be guesswork.
Predictions?
My predictions for 2021 are that the events of the last 12 months and the disruption in the economy and politically will have significant affects on what and how we work. That is easy to see–the challenge is in the what! Organisations that develop a deeper and richer understanding of their landscape and have insight into their supply chain will be in a much stronger place to be setting the course for the future.
Organisations that don’t understand how they deliver value to their customers will constantly be disrupted and not able to quickly take advantage of new opportunities that technology creates and as a result will struggle.
It’s easy to suggest that there will be improvements in artificial intelligence, robotics, data and hyper-connectivity. Taking these to a level of useful application within your organisation is going to require more time thinking about what you should currently know and testing the opportunity that change will bring.
My prediction for 2021 is that the best opportunity lies in knowing what you currently have and exposing more components to change so they are in a state to take advantage of the opportunity.
