Automation is Fragile. People are “Antifragile”

Machines, automation, rules, processes, and computer code, by definition, cannot be resilient in the face of setbacks or obstacles, except to the extent that these problems have been anticipated in advance and coded in. Automation and routine are designed to eliminate friction, and in a totally frictionless, perfectly automated world there is no need for initiative, creativity, or resilience.

But of course, a perfectly automated world requires a perfectly predictable world, which is impossible.

Yes, resilience can be simulated, in the same way intelligence can be simulated, but the simulation itself (as with simulated intelligence) must still be structured and programmed in advance, in some way. The unforeseen problems that might require resilience must themselves be anticipated and planned for.

So as we automate a business more and more efficiently we are, in effect, hard-wiring a set of streamlined and efficient processes into it, in order to ensure their flawless execution. But this means that the more efficiently automated any organization’s processes are, the less resilient that organization might become when it is required to adapt to a genuine surprise – that is, to a change in a firm’s competitive situation, or its regulatory environment, or technological developments, or anything else which was simply not imagined in the beginning

The very act of hard-wiring processes into an automated system, in other words, will tend to make an organization more fragile. But most organisms and free-market economic systems are “antifragile,” to use the term that Nassim Nicholas Taleb employs in his thought-provoking book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.

Rather than suffering from a moderate amount of disorder or mistreatment, people actually benefit from it.

When you go to the gym for your workout you’ll get tired and sweaty in the short term, but in the long term your body will benefit, and it will make you stronger and healthier. Similarly, when an economy suffers a downturn there will be some financial pain, but as the economy recovers it will emerge stronger and healthier, because the weaker companies have gone out of business while the more successful ones have made the changes necessary to adapt. 

In contrast to antifragile things like organisms and free-market economic systems, fragile things don’t benefit at all from mistreatment. Mistreat a set of automated processes and they don’t get stronger on their own; they will either hold up to the mistreatment, or they will break down entirely. And, as with a delicate piece of china, any tightly structured, well-ordered system or organization likely won’t become stronger as it experiences the push and pull of minor stresses. Rather, when a more severe stress is encountered, the very first symptom of the system's fragility will be when it breaks down or shatters completely.

If your company wants to ensure enough resilience to survive the next major, unforeseen stressor to the business it must be able to rely on people, because people have initiative, creativity, adaptability and resilience, while machines – even highly sophisticated automation systems – do not.

Picture someone at work taking the initiative to get things done, and what do you see? Someone who is engaged and energetic. Someone who wants to accomplish things. Someone driven to search for and find a solution to the problem that confronts them. While some people naturally bring these qualities to the workplace, increasingly automated companies need to foster and encourage this kind of creativity and initiative, or risk seeing their entire operation crippled by the next unanticipated hiccup in their business.

When a work environment is controlled and streamlined by rules and processes – in other words, when it is intended to run in an automated fashion – it will be very difficult to cultivate and nurture human initiative. If anything, the opposite is true, because automation often makes routine, face-to-face human interaction feel inefficient or even unnatural.