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antifragility

21
Oct
Wednesday Reality: The Steel That Passed

Wednesday Reality: The Steel That Passed

Wednesday Reality: the steel met the specification. Some ships still broke apart. An investigation into what our checks establish, what they leave unexamined, and who inherits the consequences.
7 min read
20
Oct
Monday Myth: The Admiral Who Planned for Missing Signals

Monday Myth: The Admiral Who Planned for Missing Signals

The plan received every approval. Then the team discovered something nobody had anticipated. What happens next tells you how much ownership your organisation actually allows.
7 min read
17
Oct
Friday Fun : The Decision Travelled at Thirty-Five Miles an Hour

Friday Fun : The Decision Travelled at Thirty-Five Miles an Hour

Friday Fun: the request travelled at thirty-five miles an hour. The decision required six departments and an acknowledgement of the acknowledgement. By the time everyone approved it, the customer had left. Fortunately, all departmental response times looked excellent.
7 min read
14
Oct
Wednesday Reality: The Permission to Proceed

Wednesday Reality: The Permission to Proceed

This Wednesday Reality begins beneath a railway signal, where machinery determines whether permission to proceed has earned its meaning. It follows that question into organisations, where a launch can succeed through work that never appears in the plan, then become evidence that the plan worked.
7 min read
13
Oct
Monday Myth: The Clock That Had to Leave the Workshop

Monday Myth: The Clock That Had to Leave the Workshop

Monday Myth explores why a clock that kept perfect time in a workshop could still lose a ship at sea. Organisations face a similar voyage when a successful pilot leaves behind the people and conditions that made it work. How much of what we call capability still depends on someone standing nearby?
8 min read
11
Oct
Friday Fun: The Locomotive Has Been Eliminated. Please Recruit More People to Maintain the Vacuum.

Friday Fun: The Locomotive Has Been Eliminated. Please Recruit More People to Maintain the Vacuum.

For this Friday Fun, a Victorian railway removes the locomotive and discovers how much machinery it takes to maintain the absence. The train looks simpler. The supporting operation grows busier. Somewhere, a small leather seal quietly determines whether anyone goes anywhere.
6 min read
08
Oct
Wednesday Reality | The Parts Still Need Fitting

Wednesday Reality | The Parts Still Need Fitting

A century after Johansson gauge box organisations buy common tools and reusable components, yet every delivery still queues for someone who knows how to make them work together. How much of your standardisation survives when that person leaves?
7 min read
06
Oct
Monday Myth: The Engine That Fought Its Governor

Monday Myth: The Engine That Fought Its Governor

Monday Myth: Faster intervention promises tighter control. Yet a steam engine can oscillate because of the governor meant to steady it. Organisations add another complication: the figures can improve as people adapt to the measurement, while the work those figures once represented struggles to move.
7 min read
04
Oct
Friday Fun: A Launch Event Without a Launch

Friday Fun: A Launch Event Without a Launch

Friday Fun: the ribbon has been cut, the award collected and every department has met its objectives. The ship remains on land. Asking why now counts as resistance to change. An investigation into organisations that reward everyone for a journey nobody has made.
7 min read
01
Oct
Wednesday Reality: The Silence Before Departure

Wednesday Reality: The Silence Before Departure

On 6 March 1987, the Herald of Free Enterprise left Zeebrugge for Dover. She was a roll-on/roll-off
7 min read