The Anti-Fragile Code: Rethinking High-Performance Teams

At the EMCC UK Team Coaching Special Interest Group, Synthosys co-founder Dr Tarek Jomaa introduced the community to The Anti-Fragile Code — a fresh way of understanding team performance that moves beyond traditional ideas of “high performance” and “resilience”.

Tarek argued that many teams appear strong on the surface but remain fragile underneath, especially when communication, feedback, or conflict patterns are misaligned. He shared a compelling case study from a consultancy firm struggling with innovation: despite investing in multiple innovation and communication courses, nothing changed.

The real issue wasn’t skills. It was culture. Staff perceived the organisation’s feedback environment as controlling, making people cautious, guarded, and less willing to take creative risks. At the same time, the team lacked a consistent, healthy way to address conflict — a major barrier to innovation, since conflict is where new ideas are challenged, refined, and strengthened. Tarek showed how Synthosys helped the organisation uncover these hidden dynamics and reframe innovation not as a training problem, but as a system problem. Once psychological safety and clear conflict processes were restored, creative thinking began to move freely again. Participants particularly enjoyed the blending of theory and practice. They were handed real data from the case study and asked to act as detectives, spotting patterns and uncovering the deeper issues beneath the surface. The session sparked rich conversation, reflection, and fresh insight into what truly drives — and blocks — team performance. Takeaway: High performance isn’t created through motivation or resilience workshops. It emerges when teams understand the forces shaping their behaviour, address hidden cultural barriers, and build systems where innovation and challenge can thrive without breaking the team.