© Copyright 2013 Keith D Swenson
Keith D Swenson
March 2013
Antifragile Systems for Innovation and Learning Organizations
We know what fragility is.
But what is the opposite?
Fragile
?
Fragile Robust
Fragile Robust Antifragile
Muscles are
Adaptive
The Body is Antifragile
Learning is Adaptive
“The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the competition.”
- Peter M. Senge,
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
IT System Perfection
Enlightenment Bias: - Sub-parts of a complex system
are simpler
- A stable system is made from very hard & durable sub-parts.
“Stability is a Time Bomb” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
Adaptive Systems crave Exercise
Protected Exposed
Adaptive Systems NEED Exercise
Protected Exposed
Adaptive Systems NEED Exercise
Protected Exposed
Forests are Adaptive
Monocultures are Fragile
“Nature loves small error, humans don’t — hence when you rely on human judgment you are at the mercy of a mental bias that disfavors antifragility.”
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
Enforcing a single best practice on the organization,
can make it … fragile
“No plan survives contact with the enemy.” - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
“Planning is essential, plans are worthless.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The Planning Fallacy
“The future is uncertain – but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity” - Ilya Prigogine
The Planning Fallacy
“In an unpredictable world, sometimes the best investments are those that minimize the importance of predictions.” - - Gökçe Sargut and Rita Gunther McGrath
Seven Domains of Predictability
Ap
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PC
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Variable, Unique Predictable, Repeatable
Notes Documents
& Unstructured
Data
Databases & Structured Data
Adaptive Case Management
Ap
plica
tion
De
v
PD
S In
teg
ratio
n
Hu
ma
n P
M
PC
M
AC
M
SB
S
Ema
il, Tex
ting
, Tw
itter, Te
lep
ho
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Variable, Unique Predictable, Repeatable
Notes Documents
& Unstructured
Data
Databases & Structured Data
Summary
Organizations are antifragile They improve when stressed. They crave stress (exercise).
Planning is a part of working Not something to be eliminated
I.T. systems should promote variation Demo:
Enforcing a single best practice can make organization fragile.
http://www.bpmnext.com/bpmnext-2013-presentations/
antifragile-systems-for-innovation-and-learning-organizations/
Keith D Swenson Adaptive Case Management http://social-biz.org/