In his book "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder," Nassim Taleb explains that the opposite of fragility is not just resilience or robustness but rather a property he calls antifragility.
Antifragile systems not only withstand stress and disorder but improve and become stronger. That is in contrast to fragile systems, which break under stress and disorder, and robust systems, which remain unchanged.
Taleb uses the example of a human body to illustrate this concept. A fragile body, such as a porcelain vase, would break if dropped, while a robust body, such as a steel bar, would remain unchanged. An antifragile body, such as a human body, would not only withstand being dropped but would become stronger due to the stress of the impact.
Taleb uses the example of a human body to illustrate this concept. A fragile body, such as a porcelain vase, would break if dropped, while a robust body, such as a steel bar, would remain unchanged. An antifragile body, such as a human body, would not only withstand being dropped but would become stronger due to the stress of the impact.
Why do antifragile teams matter?
The Saint Graal of engineering management is to build high-performing teams. Everyone has recipes or patterns they try to replicate across different teams and companies. These days, antifragility is the most critical property when building teams. What can we expect from antifragile teams?
- They can adapt quickly to changing circumstances. In a rapidly evolving business environment, the ability to quickly adapt and adjust to new challenges is critical for success.
- It generates creativity and innovation. Antifragile teams can foster a culture of experimentation and continuous learning by embracing change and uncertainty. That allows them to try new approaches, test new ideas, and find creative solutions to challenges.
- They can better handle stress, adversity, failures, and setbacks. Rather than being discouraged by failures, antifragile teams can learn from them and use that knowledge to improve and move forward. That allows them to stay focused and motivated, even facing challenges and setbacks.
How to build an antifragile team
Properties like antifragility are more crucial to success than a set of practices. The latter should emerge from the former. Nevertheless, I'll share some things that worked for me. I'd encourage every leader to think about their teams, products, and context and try different approaches that work for them.
Open Communication, with default to verbosity
Team members should be confident in sharing their thoughts about the product, tech, or team dynamics. Even if there's a pivot or a reorg they disagree with, there's room for debate. That is easier said than done. What has helped me so far:
- When people give me feedback about anything team-related, I encourage them to share it widely. Sure, it can generate some noise or debate, but we should expect that. How can we fully understand what the team feels and thinks if they keep it private? When people do it, I also praise their courage, so others understand the value of doing it.
- When there's disagreement with a decision/direction, I reiterate why we're doing such a change. Sharing and repeating context is super important to create trust. If we're deprioritizing an initiative or deciding something that may not be popular, it's vital to repeat the context.
- I tend to be verbose by default myself. I share updates and "For Your Information" (FYIs) weekly, especially when the team doesn't participate in leadership meetings and other events. That eases the fear of missing out and spreads organizational knowledge within the group. Below there are a two examples, where I removed some company-specific comments.
I want to encourage the same behavior in the rest of the people, doing it by example. That also frees me to go to specific meetings because I know the members representing the team will come with a summary of what happened and the next steps. That gives them responsibility and gives me peace of mind by having more time to think about their careers and strategy.
Creating a team of leaders
We embraced a simple but powerful mantra: anyone can do anything. We should not need a specific person — Engineering Manager, Product Owner, Tech Lead, etc. — to represent the team in any meeting or presentation. Everyone should get comfortable running a planning session, presenting to an audience, or moderating a retrospective. It doesn't mean that all the team members excel — or even like! — to do it. However, if we rotate this kind of activity, the team will not suffer when someone's sick or on parental leave.
When growing people, it's essential to give them these experiences. Sometimes, they'll complain they don't like to do X. Other times, they'll say they enjoyed it and want to pursue a career change into management or wish to present at the next "Big Conference®." In antifragile teams, you don't treat people as cogs. A team will still miss a particular team member. But they don't need them all the time, and that's great!
Encourage storytelling
When I read articles from big tech companies and compared them to some work my teams did, we didn't talk about it. Sure, sometimes there are exciting articles that are only Google-scale issues. That's different for the majority of publications.
Another critical point is that stories that start with the user's pain generate more impact than just talking about the technical solution. Why? It creates engagement and relatedness with the audience. I remember one time I gave a talk about failure in distributed systems. It started with:
It's 5 am. Nico reserved a taxi using FREE NOW to be at the airport at seven. However, the app doesn't work. He sees no cab and needs help understanding what's happening. Meanwhile, an engineer wakes up with an incident and starts digging into the problem. Long story short: Nico missed his flight. Drivers could not make money for 30 minutes. Imagine the impact our software can have on our users if we don't bake in resilience.
It was powerful. I could tell it from the faces of people listening to this story. It wasn't about fancy microservices or distributed systems architecture. It was about ensuring we were there for our users when they needed us more because their income was at stake. That was what engaged the audience with the talk!
Creating purpose for our teams is one of the most critical parts of being a manager. It's easier when you understand the business and can tell this kind of story. That's what I encourage in my teams. We may be working with a different tech stack in five years. But we'll need to serve our users well if we want to keep competitive in the market.
I still remember when a team member got invited to present in an internal technical forum because they had published an article in the company's blog. Good thing happens when you improve your storytelling skills. Team members become more business-aware, which enhances their decision-making and focus on what matters. It also creates more opportunities for them to engage with other areas of the company, increasing serendipity and their luck surface area.
Is that all?
There are undoubtedly other techniques to create antifragile teams. These are the ones that worked for me. Nevertheless, we live in uncertain times, with layoffs and dark clouds over almost all SaaS businesses. That's why creating antifragile teams matters: adapting quickly and better handling stress and failures. If you're able to create a team of leaders where anyone can do anything and default to openness — telling your team about hiring freezes or the broader context of your company — it's not a guarantee that you'll succeed, but you'll be a lot closer.
This is my story. What's yours?
— João
— João