The purpose of this book is to change thinking about crises and risk. Risk management is today both a great success, an impressive achievement, and a notable failure. It works, and it doesn't work. It saves lives and property, and it fails to save lives and property. It helps and it hinders. Like all such management approaches, this has a lot to do with how it is employed and practiced, but in the case of risk management there is also a much more fundamental issue. The risk management framework, the risk management model, is wrong. Many organisations today treat all risks as point events, when the real risks involve systemic threats inherent in the global economy, and the uncertain nature of global society.The book argues that risk management has come a long way, but that evidence of its more recent failure is now all around us and that it needs to now change dramatically if it is to accommodate current realities. Whilst there is a clear need for us all to manage risk through a crisis, there is a lack of understanding of the nature of crises that is impeding progress. As well as providing a conceptual basis for changing the way risk management is undertaken, the book provides a blueprint for managing at organisational level through a global crisis, and, to a more limited extent, at government and other levels; how to prepare, what to do when it's happening and how and when to emerge into the post-crisis world.

Every day human organisations fail. Building Anti-Fragile Organisations explores a powerful alternative framework for risk in the design and management of human systems. Anti-Fragility is a new way of thinking about mitigating risk that builds on earlier work on the characteristics of biological systems that, being more than just robust, actually improve their resilience through being stressed. Professor Bendell explains how applying this concept to the development and management of organisations, services and products, allows us to identify the characteristics that will not only mitigate against the realisation of hazards, but enable growth in protection, strength and anti-fragility over time. In this context, anti-fragility also encompasses flexibility, agility and the exploitation of opportunities. At the organisational level, anti-fragility (or its absence) is determined by the organisational strategy, structure and systems, its people, relationships and culture. The book focuses on establishing the Anti-Fragile concept of the firm, and explores its application in private and public sector organisations of all types. It identifies characteristics relevant to survival in a turbulent world, and how our approaches to risk and governance need to change in order to create and manage anti-fragile organisations. It provides practical insight into the concept of Anti-Fragility and its deployment within human organisations of all types, and give readers the opportunity to start to make sense to applying the concepts within their own worlds.

Every day human organisations fail. Building Anti-Fragile Organisations explores a powerful alternative framework for risk in the design and management of human systems. Anti-Fragility is a new way of thinking about mitigating risk that builds on earlier work on the characteristics of biological systems that, being more than just robust, actually improve their resilience through being stressed. Professor Bendell explains how applying this concept to the development and management of organisations, services and products, allows us to identify the characteristics that will not only mitigate against the realisation of hazards, but enable growth in protection, strength and anti-fragility over time. In this context, anti-fragility also encompasses flexibility, agility and the exploitation of opportunities. At the organisational level, anti-fragility (or its absence) is determined by the organisational strategy, structure and systems, its people, relationships and culture. The book focuses on establishing the Anti-Fragile concept of the firm, and explores its application in private and public sector organisations of all types. It identifies characteristics relevant to survival in a turbulent world, and how our approaches to risk and governance need to change in order to create and manage anti-fragile organisations. It provides practical insight into the concept of Anti-Fragility and its deployment within human organisations of all types, and give readers the opportunity to start to make sense to applying the concepts within their own worlds.