Turning Chaos Into Growth
The COVID-19 pandemic has tilted the world into chaos, inviting anxiety and doubt. But Chip Huth argues that resilience—merely weathering the storm—isn't enough. Drawing on Nassim Taleb's concept of antifragility, he introduces a framework for not just surviving disruption but emerging stronger because of it.
Fragile things break under stress (ceramic vases, glass teacups). Resilient things withstand stress without changing (rubber balls, steel beams). But antifragile things actually benefit from measured stress—like muscles that grow stronger through resistance training, immune systems that develop through exposure to pathogens, or toddlers who learn to walk through repeated failure.
The distinction matters because only people can be antifragile. Objects can be fragile or resilient, but humans alone can leverage setbacks to prepare for the next challenge. When leaders objectify their teams—seeing them as means to ends rather than people with hopes, needs, and fears—they inadvertently place limits on growth. Micromanagement seems logical from an inward mindset, but it stymies the very resistance people need to develop.
Chip shares a real-time example from his Kansas City parking control team. When stay-at-home orders hit, they asked: what would it be like to be people negatively impacted by this lockdown? They decided to stop enforcing non-safety-related parking ordinances. When a nurse and her partner's cars were towed due to a communication failure about rush-hour zones, the team picked them up, drove them to the tow lot, voided the tickets, released the cars at no cost, and refined the message. See others, adjust efforts, measure impact—then iterate.
The current crisis won't return us to business as usual. Organizations face a choice between irrelevancy and adaptation. Those who embrace disorder have a leg up on those who take comfort in routine. We don't determine our environment, but we do determine our mindset—and our mindset can determine our future.
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish fragility, resilience, and antifragility to understand why surviving disruption isn't enough—organizations and individuals must leverage chaos as the catalyst for growth and adaptation
- Apply the stoic principle of control by separating what is within our influence (how we see others, how we frame challenges) from what is not (the pandemic itself, external circumstances), focusing energy only on the former
- Use the SAM framework iteratively to continuously see others' needs, adjust efforts based on that understanding, and measure impact through regular follow-up—recognizing that conditions shift and what helped yesterday may not help today