Rugged Flexibility: A New Framework for Navigating Change

In the late 1980s, two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania observed an interesting phenomenon: in the vast majority of situations, healthy individuals and organizations do not rigidly resist change; rather, they adapt to it—but not in the way you might think. Instead of returning to the status quo, they create a new normal.

This observation is true whether it is an entire species responding to a shift in its habitat, an organization responding to the rise of artificial intelligence, or an individual getting married or divorced. Following disorder, living organisms crave stability, but they almost always achieve it somewhere new. The researchers, Peter Sterling and Joseph Eyer—a neuroscientist and a biologist, respectively—coined the term allostasis to describe this process, which they defined as “stability through change.”

At the time, this finding contradicted the conventional, centuries-old way of thinking about how living things change. Homeostasis states that following a disorder event, healthy systems return to equilibrium where they started: X to Y to X. But allostasis states that they achieve balance in a new way: X to Y to Z. Our ability to change effectively, to feel secure in growth, results from our ability to navigate this cycle. We are constantly going through cycles of order, disorder, and reorder.

It may seem like a paradox to exercise agency while also embracing something new. But our modern era is rife with accelerating and intensifying transitions—from geopolitics to pandemics to wars to artificial intelligence. Rugged flexibility is a new framework by which to reconcile and work through these rapid developments.

Rugged flexibility acknowledges that skillfully working with transformation requires strength and agency (ruggedness) and, at the same time, letting go of resistance, rigidity, and over-controlling (flexibility). In this piece, you’ll learn about this new mindset for navigating change and transformation, as well as how to apply it to circumstances in your personal and professional lives.

Achieving stability through disorder

Rugged flexibility recognizes that after disorder—a global pandemic, climate change, or the inevitable disruptions that we all face—there is no going back to the way things were. It accepts that we don’t need to look to the past to feel secure again. Instead, it teaches us to carry on its most useful lessons to what comes next, to take stock of our core values, resources, and skills—our sources of ruggedness—and then apply them flexibly. 

Here are some simple and concrete examples that illustrate cycles of order, disorder, and reorder. Say you start lifting weights or gardening regularly. The skin on your hands will almost always become disturbed. Instead of futilely trying to stay smooth, eventually, it will develop calluses so it can better meet the challenge. 

Another example is heartbreak. Recovery is not going back to how you were before you experienced intense psychic pain. Rather, it is moving forward, usually with a greater tolerance for emotional distress and increased compassion for others who are suffering. You persevere not by resisting or regressing—but by arriving at someplace new. 

Entrepreneurship contains cycles of change, too. Every time you go through a business cycle, with its inevitable disruptions—losing key employees, interest rates changing and financial targets shifting, competitors entering the marketplace, growing faster than you anticipated—you come out the other side the same but also different, and hopefully at least a little wiser for the wear. With each cycle of order, disorder, and reorder, you become stronger and more ready to take on the next inevitable period of flux. You gain self-efficacy, or a secure confidence that is based on evidence you can navigate challenges and uncertainty. 

You can practice rugged flexibility by separating what you can control about a situation from what you cannot, and then focusing on the former. Ask yourself: what core values or principles are central to my identity? What are the attributes you hold most dear? Then, you must accept the circumstances; see them clearly for what they are; and do everything you can to apply your core values flexibly—which is essentially the heart of successful evolution.

Consider, for example, a hard breakup in your personal life, like splitting from a partner or leaving a city you called home. Or perhaps your company is in a funding crunch or undergoing an HR challenge. If your core values are “presence,” “authenticity,”  and “health,” for instance, you can ask yourself what it would look like to practice them during the disorder period. What would a “present” person do to move forward? What would the “healthy” or “authentic” next action be? Your core values act like a compass to guide you into the unknown. Everything around you may be changing, but you can lean on your core values to guide you through.

Rugged flexibility makes the transitions easier

When I first confronted the ubiquity of cycles of order, disorder, and reorder, it made me uncomfortable. Research shows the average adult experiences over 35 major life changes between age 18 and their death. And yet, like so many people, I am a person who craves stability. I like to have a plan and stick to it. If you were to draw a line with stability on one end and change on the other, you could plot me about a millimeter away from the stability extreme. 

Yet, as I continued down my own life’s path, experiencing all manner of volatility, it occurred to me that no such line existed. I realized that I didn’t need to sacrifice all autonomy and simply “let go.” But I also saw that it was futile to resist transitions, to confront them from a stance of defensiveness. I learned that change didn’t need to be something that happened to me. Rather, it could be something that I was in conversation with.

This mindset shift has been integral for major changes in my own life over the last few years. I moved across the country, dealt with a family estrangement, became a parent, suffered an injury that took me out of a sport that was an outsize part of my identity, became a parent again, and navigated the pandemic. But it’s also been helpful for the day-to-day chaos of life. Once I began to practice the tenets of rugged flexibility, I wasn’t as fazed by rejections or shifting work deadlines. I became less frustrated and thrown off when my so-called “perfect” schedule was blown up by a sick kid home from school, a dog with diarrhea, or an internet outage. When I experienced complications after surgery and my rehabilitation time doubled, it didn’t upset me as much as it once would have. 

Similarly, in the workplace, we’re often navigating change, challenge, and uncertainty. For most founders, not a day goes by without it. There is a significant chasm between trying to control everything (which almost always backfires) and going wherever the wind takes you. This space is where rugged flexibility lives. Ask yourself where your sources of ruggedness lie, and then be ready to apply them in a flexible manner. 

While some things in life truly are either/or—you are either driving the speed limit or you are not; you are either pregnant or you are not—many are both/and. Decision-making is not about reason or emotion; it is about reason and emotion. Progress in just about any endeavor is not about hard work or rest; it is about hard work and rest. Philosophers call this kind of thinking non-dual. When you apply it to the inevitable vicissitudes of life and leadership, you end up with rugged flexibility: a gritty endurance, an anti-fragility that not only withstands change but thrives in its midst. 

Brad Stulberg is the bestselling author of the new book Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing—Including You, from which this piece is adapted. He writes regularly for the New York Times and is on the faculty at the University of Michigan.