Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile

As a consultant and coach, I am a catalyst or alchemist — a student of human nature and human dynamics in the context of the human condition. I have often explored the notion that ‘the human animal, with its human nature, is the most dangerous animal in its natural habitat’ — and experience has yet to falsify this notion.

Coaching

I appreciate the definition of coaching by the International Coach Federation (ICF):

Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

And I appreciate Tom Landry’s articulation of a coach:

A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.

Fundamentally, I partner with individuals, collectives of individuals, and enterprises of individuals and collectives to curiously and creatively provoke an experience that fosters awareness so that the participants’ true nature emerges and so that potential is actualized.

Art of War and Antifragile

With the soul of a practitioner, my consulting and coaching practice is rooted in Sun Tzu’s Art of War and working with chaos, which is inherent to reality. Fundamentally, I partner with clients and work with chaos in advancing their flourishing.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (2012) crystalizes that antifragility is about disorder and growth (or gain). Given that disorder and chaos are near synonymous and given that growth and flourishing are near synonymous, among other reasons, the congruence and synergy of antifragility with my consulting and coaching was almost intuitive.

Given that flourishing involves being alive and thriving in reality, and given that partnering involves a ‘delicate dance’ of integrating disparate aspects, partnering with clients and working with chaos in advancing their flourishing is a journey that is always ‘delicate’ and always at the ‘edge’ of success and failure, a delicate dance between reality and aliveness.

Perhaps what resonates most about antifragility, with me, is what resonates most about Sun Tzu’s Art of War, its ‘naturalness’.

Visit the Antifragility Edge for more about this ‘delicate dance’ at the ‘edge’.