Reading Room

The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable

What just happened?

It’s a reasonable question, the economy was zipping along nicely, the housing market was buoyant, interest rates were acceptable to everyone and exchange rates stayed within a fairly predictable range.  That world now seems like a long time ago.

In boardrooms, barrooms and terraces people are asking ‘What happened?’, ‘Why did it happen?’ and getting reasonable responses, getting to grips with the LIBOR and quantitative easing.  The tough questions that people are asking in boardrooms, in debating chambers, and soon, no doubt in courtrooms is ‘Why didn’t you plan for this?’, ‘Why wasn’t this scenario in your risk assessment?’.  People then stop talking confidently like an economics textbook and look uncomfortably at their shoes.

The reality is that people are very bad at predicting unpredictable events.  They’re also very bad at weighing up risk and accurately judging probabilities.  No-one predicted black swans, all swans were white, maybe a little browny-grey as ugly cygnets, but gloriously white as adults.  It took a while to demonstrate that the black swan-like creatures in Australia were swans, but black. 

It’s fair to say that there will be more events that your business faces in the coming months and years that you and your colleagues haven’t predicted, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to prepare for them.  A flexible, creative leadership team who can adapt strategy and mobilise people in unexpected times can make all the difference to the survival of a business. 

In this 200 anniversary year for Darwin will your leadership team be fit enough to survive?

To talk about leadership in your organisation contact:

Claudine McClean
T: +44 (0) 1789 734333
E: claudinem@predaptive.com