August 31, 2020

Below is a lesson from LinkedIn antifragility and how you can benefit from disorder, as well as our key learnings.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

TURNING CHAOS INTO GROWTH

By Charles “Chip” Huth

Leveraging Adversity to Become Antifragile

Policing a pandemic has proved very stressful, and the uncertainty associated with the COVID 19 outbreak has demanded the adoption of novel policing strategies. While we can’t choose to completely avoid the stress and volatility associated with this crisis, the way we frame it can help determine its ultimate impact.

The philosopher Nassim Taleb introduced a helpful concept in his book, “Antifragile—Things that Gain from Disorder.” Taleb wrote that most things, including people, can be characterized as either fragile, resilient, or antifragile, depending on how they respond to disruption and unpredictability. Fragile people and objects are easily harmed by unforeseen circumstances and stress, while those that resist external stressors are robust or resilient. However, some transcend volatility and improve under stress, making them “antifragile.”

Continue reading here.

Key Learnings:

• Most things, including people, can be characterized as either fragile, resilient, or antifragile, depending on how they respond to disruption and unpredictability.
• Fragile people and objects are easily harmed by unforeseen circumstances and stress.
• Those that resist external stressors are robust or resilient.
• Some transcend volatility and improve under stress, making them “antifragile.”
• Antifragile systems and people benefit from harm and disorder. Ex: Immune system that uses a vaccine to develop an immunity to that virus, or children learning to walk by falling, learning from each fall.
• We begin by honoring the core truth about those we serve: Everyone we meet is a person with hopes and fears, just like us. In our most fragile moments, we tend to lose sight of this fundamental truth, causing us to lack patience and understanding.
• While we can’t dictate how other’s respond to stress, working to control our own responses helps increase our productive influence and build antifragility. 
• Most things fall into one of two categories: things that are up to us, and things over which we have no control.
• Everything we have can be taken from us but one thing—our freedom to choose our response to anything that happens to us (Viktor Frankl). This helps to build antifragility.
• While we can learn to benefit from stress and disorder, we must remain aware of our inherent limitations.
• Regulate exposure to stressors so we aren’t overwhelmed. All stress and no rest can break us. In order to benefit from antifragility, we must be intentional about our respites from stress and chaos.