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Anticipating disruption to discover potential opportunities is mandatory for boards. This antifragility brief is a good place to begin the discussion.
At the recent WEF Davos conference, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, “Nostalgia is not a strategy”. Many chief risk officers (CROs) might agree. Whether it’s black swans, or grey rhinos, anticipating disruptions to better uncover opportunities within risk is now essential for boards.
What is antifragility?
Philosopher and risk specialist Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the concept in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), describing systems that thrive on stress and evolve through uncertainty. It’s more than being resilient. Antifragility is responding to risk with a different mindset that enables boards and management to position themselves to see disorder as a source of insight, not threat.
A system vulnerable to disruption — geopolitical, technological or otherwise — has inherent fragility and is more likely to break when stressed. By evolving under pressure, rather than enduring it or crumpling under it, boards can leverage experience and feedback to iterate and improve.
Understand the spectrum
Fragile: Breaks under pressure (for example, an outdated legacy system with no automated back-up)
Robust: Resists change, but doesn’t improve (manual processes that function reliably, but cannot scale)
Antifragile: Gains from stressors (agile teams that adapt quickly based on customer feedback)
The goal is not to avoid stress, but to harness it to improve.
Reviewing the risks
Directors are increasingly preoccupied with risks emerging inside their organisations, according to the latest Director Sentiment Index Survey. Cybercrime and data security is the number-one issue keeping directors awake at night, replacing domestic economic conditions. Anxiety over AI has surged, reflecting both its rapidly expanding potential and the growing challenge of ensuring responsible governance.
Antifragility in Australian financial services
In September 2025, Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor Brad Jones delivered an address on building antifragility into Australia’s financial system. He outlined how excessive risk minimisation could rob the system of vitality and its ability to support economic growth.
The RBA’s updated Strategic Plan stresses promoting resilience in the Australian payments system. An antifragile system doesn’t just weather the storm, it can also benefit from disruptive changes. Some key initiatives are:
→ Resilience: Ensuring essential payment services can continue operating during major disruptions.
→ Innovation: Project Mandala will automate regulatory compliance in cross-border payments.
→ Quantum-safe: Supporting industry migration to Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to counter the HNDL (harvest now, decrypt later) threat.
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Building antifragile systems
According to Julien Hay, MD of risk and compliance consultancy Aevitium, boards and executives can begin embedding antifragility via three practical priorities:
1. Integrate learning into governance
Add structured learning reviews to board and executive cycles. Discuss not only what happened, but how quickly lessons were identified and applied. Make adaptation a performance measure.
2. Link risk appetite and culture
Refresh risk appetite statements to reflect adaptability, not just tolerance. Encourage open discussion of uncertainty and curiosity about weak signals. Recognise early escalation as a strength. Antifragile risk management focuses on culture as much as control. Transparency, curiosity and accountability ensure information travels quickly and decisions follow evidence, not hierarchy.
3. Measure improvement from stress
Track metrics that show growth through volatility — adaptation velocity, lesson conversion rate and escalation timeliness. Use these indicators to assess governance maturity.
Questions for board consideration:
- What are the key assumptions and factors critical to our strategy? How vulnerable are they to disruption?
- How does management anticipate what is on the horizon and how it may impact the organisation?
- How are business and functional leaders working across organisational silos in advance of disruption to build antifragility?
- Do scenario analyses consider an appropriate range of extreme events?
- Are contingency and response plans related to material risks periodically simulated and reviewed with the board?
Enabling risk
Board oversight should connect strategic intent, risk appetite and cultural visibility. CROs translate these principles into daily practice, integrating behavioural insight with operational data. Effective antifragile governance focuses on speed of learning, not just residual risk. Each disruption becomes a feedback cycle that strengthens foresight and execution. When culture, technology and governance align, risk management evolves from protection to progress, creating organisations that gain from disorder, rather than merely surviving it.
This article first appeared under the title 'How to build an antifragile board' in the April/May 2026 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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