SixT60 Traction: Bouncing Forward. Moving Beyond Resilience to Anti-Fragility

During the last 5 years business leaders and their teams have had no choice but to be resilient. COVID? Power through! Inflation? Figure it out! Energy crisis, cost of living crisis, regulatory changes, change of government, labour shortages, Net Zero, day one rights, interest rates, the rise of ai, cyber attacks—it’s enough to make most people run for the hills.

If you’re still here through all of that, you deserve every success you achieve. And if you didn't make it but you got back up, the same applies! Take a bow.

Often business leaders aim to build resilient teams—those that can bounce back from setbacks. But what if we could go a step further? What if your team didn’t just recover from challenges, but actually grew stronger because of them?

That’s the premise of anti-fragility—the ability to adapt, evolve, and improve under pressure.?

The phrase was developed by author Nassim Taleb in 2012. Antifragility describes an increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. While resilience is the ability to keep getting back up, powering through, taking the knocks, bouncing back—but learning very little.

Antifragility is more Rocky, less Wile E. Coyote.?

We're all facing constant challenge and change. As a business leader your ability to instill anti-fragility could be your key to long-term success. But where do you start?...? Here are three actionable strategies to help you build antifragile teams that can thrive, not just survive.

1. Enable Experimentation and Embrace Failure

The first step to building antifragility is shaping mindset around failure. Teams that see failure as a learning opportunity, rather than a setback, grow stronger with each challenge they face.

If life is happening for you, not to you: Think, 'what's the lesson I need to learn here?'

This means creating a culture where experimentation is encouraged and failure is seen as a natural part of the innovation process.

Here are a few ideas:

• Create "Failure Fridays" or regular "learning sessions" where teams openly share mistakes and lessons learned from recent projects. Normalise the conversation around failure by recognising the value in what didn’t work.
• Set risk-friendly goals that reward teams for testing new ideas, even if they don’t result in immediate success. Reward the process of innovation, not just the outcome. Turn failure into a stepping stone for growth.

2. Encourage Autonomy and Decision-Making at All Levels

Anti-fragile teams thrive on autonomy. When people are empowered to make decisions without being micromanaged, they often develop a sense of ownership and accountability. This autonomy allows them to respond to challenges in real time, adapt to new information, and grow stronger with each decision they make.

Here’s how:

• Implement a "Freedom to Fail" policy, where employees have the freedom to make decisions within certain boundaries without seeking approval at every stage. This enables quicker responses and encourages employees to take ownership of outcomes.
• Encourage cross-functional teams that can operate independently on projects. Giving them the freedom to self-manage builds trust, autonomy, and adaptability.

3. Build Psychological Safety to Power Through Change

For a team to thrive through change, they need to feel safe to take risks, share ideas, and voice concerns. Psychological safety is the bedrock of anti-fragility because it enables transparency and learning in challenging situations. Teams that are confident to speak freely without fear of judgement or repercussion are better equipped to handle adversity and come out stronger.

Here’s how:

• Hold regular "pulse check" meetings to openly discuss how teams are feeling during change. Use this time to encourage honest dialogue about concerns, ideas, and ways to adapt.
• Model vulnerability as a leader. Easier said than done, granted. Start by sharing your own challenges and mistakes openly, showing that it’s safe to acknowledge when things don’t go as planned. This reinforces a culture where taking risks is part of the job.

Resilience is about bouncing back, but antifragility is about bouncing forward—recovering from challenges even better than before. By creating a culture of experimentation, empowering decision-making, and crafting and enabling psychological safety, you’re empowering your team to not only endure change but to thrive in it—and make it stick!