Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Must Read: “AntiFragile” by Nassim Taleb

The latest book of Nassim Taleb, Antifragile, is an absolute must-read. It puts a lot of common wisdom on its head and provides an interesting picture of the mistakes of the society surrounding us.

The book is thick and takes some effort to read through, but it’s worthwhile to take the time. Taleb is a very unconventional thinker; his approach to complexity and predictability is absolutely brilliant.

What is Antifragile? According to Taleb it is the property to thrive in situations that are highly uncertain and volatile.

Most of the things we produce are fragile. The Industrial Age civilization, through its manufacturing standardization and search for efficiency, tends to be fragile. And actually it would seem, according to Taleb, that modern civilization is much more fragile than before. Look at how single freak events like 9/11 or other terrorist attempts fundamentally change the life of travelers and how we are ever more deeply intolerant to unexpected events.

Fundamental mistakes of our scientific approaches are denounced in the book, in particular our custom to observe averages when volatility might be an even more influential parameter; and the limits of conventional financial statistical analysis.

In summary, take the time to read AntiFragile. It gives also an insight on how our world might become when we overcome some psychological hurdles from the Industrial Age. Several posts will be posted here that will inspire themselves from the book in the next few weeks.

Analytic Decision-Making Is Worse than Random More Often Than You Think!

Scientific thought and literature sometimes contains disturbing concepts. A number of papers have shown, for example, that on financial markets, random stock picking is better than informed choices made by any “professional” investor.

Decision making: should you not throw dices instead of over-analyzing?

Here’s another fun example of such study: how Orlando the cat beat professionals in a contest. The article goes on to explain that it is not an isolated study. And that in fact, those investors which we admire because of the high return on their investment they generate, might just have been lucky (over the short period where we observe them). As the article mentions, Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize in economics, showed over a sample that “the correlation between those fund managers who were successful in one year and those who were successful in the next year was close to zero (0.01) over eight years“.

Financial markets are the archetype of the complex system. In such a system it seems that random decision-making is better then (excessive) analysis.

When I presented this idea to a room full of engineers a few weeks ago they probably took me for a fool. Yet as the complexity of our world increases, it is not certain that the best way to take the right decisions is to enhance further our analytic models, which will be less and less representative of reality.

Have some dices in your pockets. In complex situations, throwing them might be the best decision-making method!

Resistance is the Symptom That You Are on the Right Track

The point is made by Seth Godin in his new book, the Icarus Deception:

“The resistance is the symptom that you are on the right track“.

When your inner emergency exit sign lights up, it's possibly the message that you should stay! — When your inner emergency exit sign lights up, it’s possibly the message that you should stay!

This is so true. When I try something outside my comfort zone, or which entails a part of uncertainty and risk (in particular when it involves others), resistance has a way of wrenching my stomach, and create all sort of procrastinating activities to avoid getting me to focus on what’s really important. Now, with some experience, I know that when that happens I am probably onto something that will make a difference.

In other words, when my inner emergency sign lights up, in most cases, it means that I should stay because I have touched something important!

Thus, “ The resistance is not something to be avoided: it is something to be sought out. The artist seeks out the feeling of resistance and then tries to maximize it.”

You too should seek out the feeling of resistance. Remember, Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Resistance will let you know when you’ll exit your usual comfort zone. Take advantage of it!

How Complexity is linked to Fragility and What it Means for the World

There is a definite trend in the literature to link complexity with fragility. Examples of books that revolve around this issue include “Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder” the new book by Nicholas Taleb, or more technical books on risk management in complexity such as “A new Theory of Risk and Rating” by Jacek Marczyk (that one is only recommended to risk geeks).

Fragile items just break suddenly and fully

The concept is that in a complex world, in particular when systems reach very high complexity, at the limit of what is bearable by the system, things can change abruptly. Instead of being ductile, the world then shows very fragile, brittle characteristics. The previous state is suddenly broken and is replaced by a very different condition.

Fragility is thus linked with complexity.

We would prefer to live in a world where change happens progressively, which would give us some chances to intervene. This is what engineers are always seeking when they specify that engineered materials should remain as ductile as possible across a wide range of conditions – this is to avoid the sudden, unpredictable rupture without prior deformation.

As complexity increases in a given system, it becomes more and more fragile – until it breaks suddenly, unpredictably, and is replaced by a new system that is more tolerant to complexity.

This theoretical observation has wide-ranging consequences. Our world today becomes more and more complex, interconnected. Our societies need to change before they reach the limit of complexity they can bear. Or, changes will inevitably be sudden, with lots of damages. Because, if our societies and institutions don’t change, their fragility will increase. Until they reach the breaking point.

Thrive Through Complexity by Leveraging Collaboration of an Effective Team

Not only is Collaboration the key to deal with Uncertainty; the extreme collaborative setup, the Effective, Performing Team, is the key to tackle Complexity. That’s in effect the meaning of the conclusion of Jim Collins we quoted in the blog post “How to Take Decisions in a Complex Environment“.

team table — Are you presently mobilizing an effective, performing team?

It is tough to reach the point of achieving a high performing, effective team. In effect, this is the ultimate model of collaboration, where connection between individuals reaches such an emotional depth that it allows to mobilize all of the participant’s resources for the sake of the team’s purpose.

Depending on the level of performance of the team, different levels of complexity can be tackled; but the most uncertain, most complex situations can only be dealt with a totally committed, effective team.

In my consulting work I often observe how getting the leadership team of organizations to work as a performing team is the first condition for any effective transformation. It should be the first focus, instead of launching initiatives all over the place (as most organizations stuck in a rut tend to do).

Do you have an effective, performing team to help you through complexity? If not, what are you going to do to get it working as it should? That should be your first priority, now!

Why you Should Live with a Large Amount of Uncertainty in your Life

According to Tony Robbins, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with“.

dice illusion — How comfortable are you with uncertainty and illusions?

This quote can be taken in two ways. A first, protective way is to suppose that the more you can bear uncertainty, the least disturbed you will be by what is happening around you and the happier you will be. This is quite a limited view which will not lead to transforming your life.

I certainly prefer to think of uncertainty rather as a source of opportunity – a second way to understand this quote. Uncertainty is the key for unexpected success in today’s increasingly complex world. The unexpected encounters, unforeseeable events or the unexpected viral effect of an artistic production actually shape much of today’s world. Just before these uncertain things happen, uncertainty was at its maximum. Just after, our world and existence took a turn. The world branched out. If you can’t bear the high level of uncertainty linked with releasing something to the world, then you can’t shape it. You can’t shape your life.

Living with uncertainty is at the same time uncomfortable and exciting. It is not a character trait, it is a choice. So, are you ready to choose to live with a high level of uncertainty in your life? Are you ready to grab those opportunities that will come close to you?

How to Take Decisions in a Complex Environment

How can you take the (right) (best) decision in a complex environment? Rely on your team. Decide on the ‘who’ and not on the ‘what’.

That’s all. That’s so much.

How can you take the right decisions in a real, complex world?

Jim Collins reminds us in his foreword to the book “Fortune: the Greatest Business Decisions of All Times“: “The greatest decisions were not “what” but “who?”, they were people decisions.”

“Fundamentally, the world is uncertain. Decisions are about the future and your place in the future when that future is uncertain. So what is the key thing you can do to prepare for that uncertainty? You can have the right people with you“.

The next time, instead of spending too much time developing spreadsheet projections over the next decades (which mean absolutely nothing), focus your energy on getting the right people in. Not just people like you, but a diverse and complementary team. Then through conflict and discussions, you’ll make your way through this complex world.

Where is your team right now? When do you start building it to thrive in this complex world?

Use Collaboration More to Deal with Uncertainty!

Now that we recognize that we should live with a large amount of uncertainty in our lives, and not believe like in the Industrial Age that the world can be made to be certain, how can we find a way to increase the uncertainty we can bear and turn this uncertainty into opportunity?

Collaboration is the key here. Because through collaboration and creating tribes that can vet our creation, we have a group that can give us feedback before we expose ourselves too much to the world, with which we can discuss any weird idea that come to our mind. We have a group that can funnel to us the information we need to understand the present situation. We can then increase the level of uncertainty we expose ourselves while minimizing risk.

Actually, collaboration is really a fundamental key to success in the real, complex world. It allows to draw ideas from multiple brains that have been expose to multiple situations and dramatically increase our own capabilities.

Maintaining our social network as a ‘secure base’ with which we can test our latest weird idea is a fundamental capability to explore new possibilities.

Certainty in our world and our lives was an illusion. We now know it can’t work. We now have the tools and the capability to routinely collaborate across continents with hundreds, thousands of people (yes, you also: how many people are you linked with on all your social network tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc?). We still don’t take enough advantage of this new capability because we don’t really understand it.

Take advantage of your social network more. Harness this collaborative energy to increase the amount of uncertainty you can cope with – and enjoy a better life while increasing your contribution.

Stop Propagating the Industrial Age’s Illusion of Certainty!

In the Industrial Age, for the first time in our long human history, we were conditioned into believing that our life, our environment could be made certain: regular salary increment and a sure retirement; regular working times; lower and lower variance of manufactured items and processes, etc.

The normal of the Industrial Age — How enjoyable is the “normal” of the Industrial Age?

The entire system was geared to make us believe that certain was normal. We tried hard to fit every event into normality; to diminish as much as possible the impact of unavoidable variation (like weather, for instance) on our lives. Any hindrance to our existence was to be considered a problem that needed to be addressed to bring it back to normality.

We need to recognize now how much of an illusion that was. In addition, that turned out to be quite boring. Freak events will continue to happen forever. We need to live with a large amount of uncertainty in our lives to be successful and invent the world we want.

Many people still live in the dream of the Industrial Age certainty (although, luckily, much less since the 2008 economic ‘crisis’ which shook many ‘certain’ existences). This myth continues to be propagated by large sections of our current institutions like social security, public schools… It is important to recognize it is a myth, and resolutely move into the Collaborative Age mindset of thriving on uncertainty.

How you Should Subtract Things Every Day from Your Life

A very famous quote by Lao Tze talks about wisdom:

“To attain knowledge, add things every day.

To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.”

Unlearning by Master Yoda — Even Master Yoda’s wisdom is that one needs to unlearn!

We are not used to consider subtracting things from our daily life, unlearning what we know, do be part of what we should do. Still a lot of very respected wise people do insist on this key skill to progress in life.

We tend to add-on, increase the clutter on our desks and lives, but not so often do be subtract. Or when we do it, it is a real crisis and it becomes counterproductive. I am personally very guilty of adding up and seldom subtracting – up to the point where it becomes too much as I tend to clean up my life (sometimes a bit too harshly).

Being able to subtract progressively and maintain an acceptable level of clutter is a key skill for happiness and success, in particular in the world of the Fourth Revolution. A few minutes per day removing things from our desks and minds is the right solution. It’s tough but it needs to be done! Would you have any other suggestion?

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent) for the quote and more insights

Why you should Fully Segregate Manufacturing and Creative Activities

Manufacturing (Industrial Age) and Creative (Collaborative Age) organizations require different approaches and skills. They are two different business models. As such, organizations should not try to run them in the same business unit.

Manufacturing organizations require:

compliance to the rules;
minimum variation;
carefully evaluated changes thus, continuous improvement;
production of large quantities and high physical capital intensity to achieve the necessary economy of scale.

Creative organizations require:

non compliance to rules, misfits and weirdos
discontinuous and radical change
small scale production and low capital intensity (outside human capital)

Apple Designed in California, Manufactured in China — Apple is a key example where creative and manufacturing activities are separated. You are not obliged to treat manufacturing as subcontractors; but you need to make it at least, a separate business unit

How can you even imaging having these two kinds of activities under the same roof, under the same budget, under the same responsible person?

Following a very general recommendation in the field of entrepreneurship and even of management, two different business models should be separated. If not run in different legal entities, they should be run in different business units. Creation of the product needs to be separated from manufacturing production. The necessary interface needs to be managed through a carefully arranged agreement.

Separate fully your creative, project creation side from your traditional manufacturing side or you’ll never manage to take advantage of the Fourth Revolution!

Why Writing is a Key Skill – and How it Can be Learned

I love writing. I love the way it forces me to put my thoughts together in the right order, how it shows whether what I think is logical and meaningful. Writing undoubtedly also exercises my creativity.

I did not always love writing. I was quite crappy as a young student. I improved. Today I write a lot, and I exercise in writing a lot (this blog is part of the exercise!). It’s clearly a skill that can be improved. Today I can write very quickly good quality pieces of text. It has become such a skill that it is part of the foundation of my professional success as a consultant (writing procedures and reports, anyone?).

This astonishing article “The Writing Revolution” even shows how imparting writing skills to struggling students can change their lives and their grades. How giving them the skills to express themselves clearly and logically improved their level in almost every topic. A school introduced that and it is now becoming a standard throughout the US.

Further to writing by itself, writing and publishing to the world is a further skill where you need to overcome shyness.

In the Collaborative Age, writing as a skill is even more important because we are using more writing than ever to communicate. Are you improving steadily your writing skills? if you are not, you should!

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