OCTOBER 2017 / NO. 2
TAGS: VUCA, NASSIM TALEB, BLACK SWAN, GREY SWAN, GRAY RHINO

Black Swans, Grey Swans and Gray Rhinos

“If only 0.5 percent of all companies are able to get insights from Big-Data Analytics, can you imagine how many managers get insights from Strategic Intelligence? It’s even less than 0.5 percent and is like driving using only the rearview mirror of a car.”
“If governments, special agencies, and the military all invest billions in intelligence year-after-year, why is it that managers neglect strategic intelligence in their companies? The simple answer is because they all underestimate the phenomenon of ‘The Gray Rhino’”
Every manager in every company business function is part of a high-impact VUCA world: Volatility – Uncertainty – Complexity – Ambiguity. In this VUCA world, Nassim Nicholas Taleb published his famous book “The Black Swan” in 2007. Based on Taleb’s Black Swans, we have been using the phenomenon of Grey Swans with our unique Grey Swan Analysis. In the spring of 2016, Michele Wucker came out with her book “The Gray Rhino”, on the basis of which we added ‘Gray Rhino Analysis’ to our strategic intelligence practices.

What is a Gray Rhino?

A Gray Rhino is a highly-probable, high-impact threat, which we ought to see coming, but which, however, we either do not see, or see but willfully choose to ignore. We consistently fail to recognize the obvious and fail to prevent highly-probable high-impact threats. The problem is not one of weak signals, but rather of weak responses to signals. In our companies, we are not good at recognizing threats or responding to these threats. Rhinos on the distant horizon begin as distant threats, and Gray Rhinos have the potential to come together to form herds. In the zoological world a herd of rhinoceroses is called a “crash”.
“So, the question is not if, but when a Gray Rhino will happen”
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