Book Review: Antifragile, Things that Gain From Disorder

 

Book Review: Antifragile, Things that Gain From Disorder

There are many levels to understanding and application for this classic, if not already, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  A book published several years ago, that is, in 2012 has much relevance to traders, financial services professionals, managers and chief executives from large, small and medium size firms.  And, it was written with that audience in mind. Nassim Taleb was a derivatives trader, academic researcher and now teaches Risk Engineering at New York University. He has spent his career discussing and researching probability, managing uncertainty and risk management.   However, as the Black Swan that he mentions, this book has great reference and highlights guide posts in this gem for program and project managers. These will be covered in future blogs on Project Management.com. However, to start, the concept of antifragile and its application to program leadership. Antifragile flows from the definition of fragile. As fragile is expressed by Taleb as what does not like volatility and that what does not like volatility does not like randomness, uncertainty, disorder, errors, etc. Antifragile likes volatility and managing combustibility. It likes time and the non-linear.

Antifragile or Fragile Leader: Which Is More Successful?

 In Antifragile, Taleb discusses the concept of teleological and optionality. And, I ask which program manager are we? Which will succeed? Does one have to be teleological in several circumstances and project and exhibit optionality in others, or be true to form antifragile and be optional consistently?  These are not discussed. As a project manager, portfolio manager or program manager or on a higher level, a leader, for short, the antifragile leader will look at the future and then re-engineer the project or deliverable to the milestones and tasks documented in the project plan to determine the gaps in coverage. Further the antifragile leader will be an opportunist or risk-taker. But this has to be conditioned based on the budget, schedule and support from the stakeholders. The leader or program manager has to aggressively manage the risks on the project as a badge of honor. The leader recognizes a sense of thrill and adventure on the project, knowing that he or she is learning something new, taking the first in a different course, or is charged with additional responsibility to be on a mission, such as a captain of a starship. The successful leader can be an academic, but has to have some skin in the game, and be well versed in the practices, tools and technology of project management.  The leader has to use the objective and narrative of the project to drive success and use it for motivation. He or she is not there to use scare techniques to obtain success. Instead, due to the significance of the project, he or she has access to the broad domain of the business and resources that have been assigned to the project or group of projects to succeed.

Another question, must the successful program leader have a very deep background of the business? Is it necessary to have training or a knowledge of project management principles? Can the leader succeed without an in-grained understanding of project management? If I can paraphrase, Taleb, it is my understanding that little understanding of the business or project management is necessary for the antifragile leader. In fact, it is the broad and vast extensive knowledge of business management or life’s’ experiences which can be used to ensure success.  However, the leader must be able to use rational thought to compare and evaluate outcomes of requirements and be able to take risks by explaining to the stakeholders and developers the outcomes and impact of their coding? As a team, they have to look at the big picture. The leader has to look at the tasks, deliverables and milestone, work with the given resources and know how to evaluate using a methodology, Taleb expresses the risk-taker, to exercise the better option. The project becomes an exercise by the leader in weighing each of the options whether to use this material or not, whether to put these deliverables before or after these, when to take risk or not and how much risk is enough to get success? His trader methodology and approach to project management appears to be “No risk, No reward”,  and “Make today count”. These are my words, and not his.

On the other hand, Taleb does not mention that the fragile leader will not succeed. Instead, The fragile leader can succeed as long as they confine themselves to the story, the requirements, scope creep is a “no-no.” They are not aggressive in taking risks, and are guided by the stakeholders and politics of the environment. They are co-pilots in the ship. The pilot is the stakeholder.  However, they need to understand the business theory, environment and project management and their narrow domains. The successful fragile leader can be an academician who views the project as an experiment on a higher calling and uses the enterprise as an experiment. They have to look at the past, subject to overfitting to the past and hate uncertainty. They mine the knowledge base of lessons learned maintained by the project management office or group within the enterprise to provide guideposts to the manager and resources on the project.  Learn from the prior risk takers, and do not fail.

Which leader are you? Do you believe that both types of leader can succeed?