8.
ANTIFRAGILITY
‘If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew, to do their turn long after you are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing left in you, except the will that says to them HOLD ON."
When Jon White stood on a bomb in Afghanistan, he had no choice about how many limbs he would lose – the bomb chose three. Both legs above the knee and his right arm at the elbow. The one thing Jon did choose in that moment was to “hold on,” hold on to life. When the femoral artery is severed there is literally a three-minute window to stem the flow of blood before death takes place. It took his colleagues two minutes to find him and clear a safe passage to him so that they could perform the life-saving first aid.
0540hrs Wed 16 June 2010, Sangin, Helmand, Afghanistan
“‘Buck, come on with me, make sure they put me to sleep, please Buck’. ‘I will, don’t worry Jon, you’re doing well’. He places one of his huge hands on my shoulder, I needed the Sergeant Major there. The Chinook lands, I feel a little relief, I’m desperate, the deep burning throb of the tourniquets is more than I can bear, the guys start racing me to the open door, I can’t remember who is carrying the stretcher. I’m inside, I reach out and grab a man in a flight helmet. ‘Put me to sleep, put me to fucking sleep now’! My head tilts to the right as the Chinook takes off, I see the ground move out of the window and I relax.”
Sun 20 June 2010, Birmingham, UK
“There’s light, bright light, some moving colours and voices, I’m sure they are voices. Suddenly there is clarity, my Dad and my sister are at the end of my bed.
‘We need to let Bex know what’s happened, I can remember her address Dad, get a pen and paper’.
‘I can do better than that’. He leaves the room, the next thing I remember Bex walks in, I’ve missed her so much. She makes her way to the left of me and leans over, her head close to mine, she tells me: ‘It’s ok, I’m not going anywhere, I’m going to stay with you no matter what’. ‘Well, in that case we should get married’.
‘Ok, yes’. I remember her hugging me, I don’t know how accurate this memory is, or any of the above for that matter, it’s all a bit hazy now. Trauma and morphine does that to you.”
This was four days after the explosion. Jon found himself in the newly opened Intensive Care Unit at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and he knew he was lucky to have survived.
The next few days are all hazy. He remembers being fed greasy lasagne and chips, which made him sick. He remembers being transferred off Intensive Care and onto Ward D. He was sick again after they inserted a PICC line. At first he could not even roll over, but gradually the pain resided and he was able to do more and more. Jon remembers when they unwrapped his legs for the first time. He had expected to see a patchwork of sewnup skin, maybe with a few scabs. What he saw instead was what can only be described as two raw joints of beef. He almost cried with the shock. Bex told him it was OK, it was normal and what she had expected. “She lied well, it comforted me,” he says.
Jon made his decision quickly. He narrowed his options down to two – “Roll over and die,” or “Get up and get on with life.”
He chose the latter and started physiotherapy. Bex bought him a child’s handwriting book as he’d had lost his right, dominant arm. Once he could climb into his wheelchair alone, Jon made a point of getting out of bed every morning after breakfast, dressing, making his bed and doing some writing practice before visitors arrived.
After his second week on the ward, a young plastic surgeon, Anton, told Jon that his legs were healing well and he could get out of hospital in two weeks’ time. Jon hung on to this and the following week he told the consultant that he only had one more week before he was discharged. The consultant laughed and said his spirit was commendable. Luckily Jon knew the Ward Registrar, Sandy, whose brother had been the Medical Officer for the unit he had been serving with. Jon spent the whole week telling Sandy and the ward nurses that he was being discharged. By the following week’s ward round Jon made sure he had all his papers in order. When he told the consultant he only had one night left, the consultant went along with it.
“I left hospital after 27 nights with both my legs amputated above the knee and my right arm amputated at the elbow. A true example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have a vision and you communicate its certainty with everyone you meet, then it will come true. This is every leader’s greatest tool, tell them there is a light, show it to them, even if it’s just in their imagination, and they will follow you to the end of the tunnel.”
Jon has not only survived but thrived as a result of his ordeal. He embodies what philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “antifragility." Taleb describes antifragility as “beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”110
Under the trauma of his experience, Jon grew stronger. One year and three days later he hung up his wheelchair and has not used it since. He has learnt to walk, run, snowboard, kayak and drive a normal car, unaided and unadapted. He has married and become a father, built a “Grand Designs” home, and started a property development business.
The airline industry was one of the worst-hit sectors after the September 11 attacks, with drastic falls in passenger numbers resulting in plummeting shares and huge financial losses. Over the ensuing days and weeks, all American airlines cut jobs, with a total of over 140,000 people losing their jobs. One airline stood out amongst the rest by defying the trend. On October 8 2001 Jim Parker, the then CEO of Southwest Airlines, made a surprising statement – “We are willing to suffer some damage, even to our stock price, to protect the jobs of our people.”111 The airline embarked on an explicit no-lay-offs strategy, which dismayed industry experts. Research carried out over the three years following September 11 studying the 10 largest US airline companies shows that Southwest was the only American airline to make a profit in every single quarter of the period studied. US Airways, which carried out the largest lay-offs of all (25%), followed the opposite trend, making a loss in every single quarter.112
The research shows that one of the key factors that accounted for Southwest’s recovery from the industry crisis was its unequivocal commitment to its employees. In spite of the crisis and calls to follow the trend set by other airlines, Southwest remained true to its people-centred management philosophy and held onto its most important asset – the heart of the organization.
Rather than crumble under the shock of the crisis, the airline created strong relational reserves, which enabled it to thrive, a perfect example of anti-fragility. As an airline analyst remarked: “They are doing what they do best, which is to shine in the hours of trouble.”