Do more

In our increasingly “VUCA” Covid world (see this post), we can feel a little powerless about the unpredictability of major events, or Black Swans, but we can “Do More”.

Black Swans and Grey Swans

On March 8th, 2020 I published a post called “Act Now”, imploring leaders of businesses to, well “Act Now” rather than wait, as the impact of Covid was already clearly going to be massive. Nicholas Nassim Taleb originated the term Black Swan and defined it as being an event that is a) unpredictable, b) rare, and c) of high impact.

In my post I referred to the idea of a Black Swan and his full definition, then asked “To what level can we predict such events?”, noting that:

“We can look at the circumstances and environments that can lead to events of “rarity” and “extreme impact”. We can also, to reference another book by Taleb, look to be “Anti-Fragile“, to be resilient both in looking to predict rare and extreme impact events and also in how quickly and effectively we are able to respond when they occur.”

Fast forward to this year and I have joined the fascinating “Grey Swan Guild”. So, what is the difference between a Black Swan and a Grey Swan? Simply put, a Black Swan cannot be predicted, but a Grey Swan is predictable. The definition used by GSG: A “grey swan” is a term used to describe a potentially very significant event that is…