Designed for Volatility
Designed for Volatility

The book is the playbook.

A practical playbook for leaders who will stop targeting resilience and rebuild the company so volatility makes it stronger.

Designed for Volatility takes Taleb’s insight — some systems improve because of volatility — and turns it into an operating model a leadership team can run.

The recurring test is AI. Not a technology race: a full exam of the enterprise. AI exposes weak data, unclear decision rights, brittle workflows, cultural silence, outdated talent models, misaligned incentives, and fragile metrics. Used well, that exposure is how the company redesigns how it learns, governs, funds, measures, and adapts.

The book is the shared language for that rebuild.

A written report on hidden fragility. Copies go live when the book ships. Until then, the diagnostic is the door.

What is inside

Four moves, not a syllabus:

See the fragility

Name what looks stable in a quiet quarter and fails when variance arrives.

Protect the core

Wall off what must not fail. Everything else can take a punch — including the next AI pilot.

Build the option portfolio

Small bets, kill rules, barbell allocation.

Hold a 90-day cadence

What we protected, what we tried, what we killed, what we try next.

Under those moves: strategy as a guidance system, decision rights closer to the work, communication as infrastructure, consequences tied to incentives and metrics, and a 90-day / 180-day / 12-month operating plan. Methods and team tools, not a theory to admire.

Who it is for

COOs, CHROs, CIOs, CEOs, and the advisors already in the room — mid-to-large organizations tired of treating each shock as a special project.

If you need a beach read or a general theory of antifragility, this is the wrong book.

How to use it

One copy is a reminder. Shared copies are the playbook. The Work is the 90-minute session or the 90-day working group.

David J. Blumenthal: commercial and operating lens. Yair Alan Griver: technology and operating systems. Two perspectives. One playbook. Bios on About.