On Embracing Chaos and Thriving in Uncertainty
iStock.com/Marco Montalti.
Last month, I had the pleasure of chatting with Edzo Botjes, an antifragility and cyber resilience expert, on embracing chaos and what it means to thrive in uncertainty. As with every Abstract post, I’d like to share the key concepts on the topic along with a summarized view of our conversation. But first, allow me to introduce Edzo :-)
Introducing Edzo
Edzo, an Antifragility Architect, is a trusted figure in the enterprise architecture field. His deep understanding of organizational culture and its impact on IT change has shaped his career. As a researcher, teacher, and consultant, Edzo is passionate about building resilient organizations. He has helped over 40 clients successfully navigate IT change initiatives. A sought-after speaker, Edzo teaches Enterprise Architecture and Cyber Resilience at the Applied Science University of Utrecht and the Antwerp Management School. He is pursuing a PhD in Cyber Resilience at the Open University of the Netherlands. Edzo’s mission is to continuously improve and share his knowledge and experience. He advocates for security and privacy as organizational capabilities that embrace and enable continuous change. He firmly believes that, ultimately, an organization’s culture determines the success of IT change.
During our conversation, several vital concepts were essential to understanding how organizations can thrive amidst chaos.
Concepts
Antifragility: Nassim Nicholas Taleb developed the concept of antifragility. Unlike resilience, which is the ability to recover from challenges, antifragility refers to systems that improve and grow stronger when exposed to stress and uncertainty.
Taleb, N.N. (2012). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House.
E. Botjes, M. van den Berg, B. van Gils, & H. Mulder, “Attributes relevant to antifragile organizations,” In 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI), Bolzano, Italy, 2021, pp. 62–71, https://doi.org/10.1109/CBI52690.2021.00017.
Fiorini, R. A. (2019). A Strategic Proposal for the New Society: Surviving and Flourishing from Chaos. In R. Poli & M. Valerio (Eds.), Anticipation, Agency, and Complexity (Vol. 4, pp. 149–171). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03623-2_10
Cynefin Framework: Dave Snowden developed the Cynefin framework, a decision-making tool that helps leaders understand and navigate complexity. It categorizes problems into five contexts: simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disordered, guiding the approach to problem-solving.
Snowden, D.J., & Boone, M.E. (2007). A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review.
The Learning Organization: A learning organization continuously evolves by encouraging and facilitating learning at all levels. This concept is closely linked to an organization’s ability to adapt to changing environments.
Garvin, D.A. (1993). Building a Learning Organization. Harvard Business Review.
The Fifth Discipline: Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline is foundational for understanding learning organizations. It outlines five essential elements for creating one: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.
Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Currency
Strategic Foresight: The practice of anticipating and preparing for future changes. It involves various techniques, such as scenario planning and the Delphi method, to help organizations navigate uncertainty and make informed decisions.
Rohrbeck, R., & Schwarz, J.O. (2013). The Value Contribution of Strategic Foresight: Insights from an Empirical Study of Large European Companies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2013.01.004
Seneca’s Barbell: An investment approach that advocates for balancing low-risk, stable investments with highly speculative bets. This concept aligns with antifragility by limiting downside risks while exposing oneself to potential upside gains.
Taleb, N.N. (2012). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems: Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems reveal the limitations of formal systems in mathematics. The theorems state that there are factual statements within any consistent mathematical system that a person cannot prove. This concept parallels the idea that any model or plan will inevitably miss some aspects of reality.
Embracing Chaos
In our conversation, Edzo emphasized that complexity and chaos are not enemies to resist; they are the fabric of our world. Instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty, organizations should focus on becoming antifragile — embracing complexity and learning to “dance” with chaos.
He defines antifragility as the ability to benefit and grow stronger from challenges and stress, unlike resilience, which is about bouncing back to the original state, or robustness, which is about staying unchanged under stress. He explains that fragile systems break under stress, robust systems remain unaffected, and antifragile systems thrive and improve.
Many organizations think they can control every variable, but it’s about thriving within uncertainty. The best organizations accept that not everything can be “predicted” and find ways to adapt and grow stronger in a VUCA world. See also “BANI,” proposed by Jamais Cascio.
Organizational Learning
Continuous learning is the cornerstone of becoming antifragile. Fostering a learning culture is essential for organizations to be resilient, and antifragility goes a step beyond resilience by enabling organizations to adapt and grow stronger through challenges. The process can be likened to how athletes train — by pushing limits in a controlled environment to build strength and endurance.
Antifragile organizations do more than recover; they thrive under stress and uncertainty, using it as a catalyst for improvement. Introducing controlled stressors into systems is key — not to overwhelm but to identify weaknesses and make the organization stronger and more resilient over time. However, too much stress can break the very systems that are being improved, so it must be managed carefully.
Becoming Antifragile
To support the development of antifragile organizations, Edzo adapts the learning model from Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. This model includes five key elements: personal mastery, mental models, building a shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.
The learning model of Senge and Hestenes by Edzo Botjes, adapted from 2024–05 @ PyGrunn Securing & Chaos | Licence: CC BY SA
This learning model fosters continuous adaptation and collaboration, helping organizations evolve, which is crucial for building resilience and antifragility.
On Foresight, Enterprise Architecture, and Antifragility
Edzo argues that the idea of being antifragile is that you can not predict what is happening, so you are trained for the unknown. Hence, Antifragility is focused on reacting, and that is why it is the only antidote against the black swan. Strategic foresight is vital for helping organizations prepare for multiple futures, and foresight techniques train the organization to deal with stressor events. Continuous learning is a crucial foundation for both strategic foresight and antifragility.
Going deeper into both concepts, Antifragility is about thriving amidst uncertainty, and foresight is a way to navigate that uncertainty by exploring different scenarios. However, foresight alone is not enough — organizations must also focus on enterprise design and enterprise architecture to create robust and adaptable organizations.
Enterprise Architecture plays a critical role in supporting antifragility. By using models to make sense of the impact of reality on an organization’s structure and processes, enterprise architects can advise on how best to implement changes that enhance resilience and antifragility. It is essential to balance stability with the ability to pivot quickly, ensuring that teams have the autonomy to innovate while maintaining coherence across the organization.
Practitioners are encouraged to explore the relationship between strategic foresight, enterprise architecture, and antifragility further. Integrating these concepts can lead to successful organizations that thrive in the face of uncertainty.
Becoming Antifragile: Here’s what you can apply now…
To become antifragile, organizations should introduce controlled stressors to test and strengthen their systems, ensuring they grow stronger over time so that the organization evolves to a state of mind that it can actively look for stress, knowing it will gain value from the unknown.
Fostering a culture of continuous learning is essential, allowing challenges to become opportunities for improvement. Balancing stability with flexibility is key — having solid processes while staying adaptable to unexpected changes.
Strategic foresight methods, such as scenario planning, help organizations prepare for various futures, but the focus should be on adaptability rather than prediction. We can’t predict the future, but we can prepare for them.
Decentralized decision-making empowers teams to respond quickly and innovate, contributing to overall resilience.
Common pitfalls to avoid include overwhelming the system with too much stress too quickly, focusing only on short-term fixes, and rigidly adhering to processes without room for flexibility.
Organizations can thrive in uncertainty by following these points.
To conclude, here’s some reflection:
Are there other points to add above about becoming antifragile?
How does your organization handle chaos and uncertainty?
Listen to the full interview on Spotify and Apple Podcast.
