Black Swans* have altered the course of all our businesses. Unexpected events have made our vision of a successful future (and our plan to get there) outdated. Black Swan events are always unexpected by those who don’t fully understand and anticipate the risks their businesses face. Leaders who fail to prepare plans to deal with events that change everything can miss their exit and continue down what is now the wrong road.
Prepare for the unexpected differently this time. Instead of just brainstorming with your favorite colleagues, add some people you would not ordinarily invite, folks who wouldn’t normally do this with you over drinks. Balance your Black Swan anticipation team with quiet, serious people in technical roles. Look for them in your Finance, IT and Legal departments, and in your Accounting and Law firms. These people have a natural talent for coming up with worst case scenarios. Just give them plenty of advance time to think about what could possibly go wrong, and get ready for the interesting new risks you hadn’t thought of and need to prepare for.
Improve your value as a leader by developing your risk management and emergency preparedness skills with a more balanced team. This will empower you to harden your business against more risks and arrive at the future with the right solution when the inevitable Black Swan comes over the horizon.
*A Black Swan is an improbable, hard to predict event that suddenly changes everything. The term derives from the shocking discovery of black swans in Australia by European explorers who ‘knew’ that all swans were white. The “Black Swan event” was introduced in Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb, a former BT Derivatives trader who is now the Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University.
Ed Forsberg
Executive Strategist and CEO at Forsberg & Co.
