BLACK SWANS, GREY RHINOS AND UGLY DUCKLINGS

The Journal, Chartered Insurance Institute: May 12, 2012

Black swans, grey rhinos and ugly ducklings | The Journal Magazine (cii.co.uk)

This article is an outcome of a brilliant event hosted by Ethical Systems and Preventable Surprises. Renowned author Michele Wucker brought forth her strategies to empower individuals and institutions to tame the pandemic.

Metaphors capture defining moments but they are vulnerable to clicheing or mutations. The ongoing pandemic, despite the assertion by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that it was a White Swan – flipped to a Black Swan! Needless to mention, each one of us has our own baggage. Interestingly, that influences individual and collective beliefs. Risk management included. Michele Wucker endeavours to demolish entrenched misplaced narrative and puts us head on with the ‘grey rhino’ (#GrayRhino: the American way).

I expect a later discovery – the Green Swan to stay benign – just as conceived by John Elkington – to deliver exponential progress in the form of economic, social and environmental wealth creation. Notwithstanding the simultaneous existence of a Black Swan version for a catastrophic ‘climate event’.