Goodbye to a Tumultuous Year

Illustration: Watercolor by Black Elephant Blog author (December 2016)

As 2016 winds down, it’s fitting in the quiet week before a New Year to consider the meaning of Black Elephants, Black Swans and the other metaphorical creatures of surprise, such as the boiling frog,  who opened up this blog two years ago this month.  There’s been a lot more attention given to them since then in other venues.  It’s surprising but true.  It’s equally surprising but true that the journey of many artists has, it seems to me, much to offer the rapidly changing world in which we find ourselves today–if we were to want to face up to these creatures of surprise.  This is because artists often try to see beyond the surface impressions to get at the truth of things–that’s what gives art its special meaning to many of us.

One could even say that we live in Black Elephant times if, by that, what we mean is what Thomas Friedman referred to in his op-ed of two years ago, called “Stampeding Black Elephants.”  In that article, he defined the metaphor “Black Elephant” as follows:

 “a cross between “a black swan” (an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications) and the “elephant in the room” (a problem that is visible to everyone, yet no one still wants to address it) even though we know that one day it will have vast, black-swan-like consequences.”

As I understand it, the phrase (which Friedman picked up from an environmentalist he’d recently met) “Black Elephants” refers to the concept of the uncomfortable, unthinkably unpalatable “elephant in the room” that we would rather not discuss or acknowledge, and therefore–too often–fail to address in time.  (This is also known as the “boiling frog syndrome,” or the “ostrich with its head in the sand,” or the “deer in the headlights” syndrome, etc.)

Image: Watercolor, gouache, and ink by Black Elephant Blog author (2014)

This concept covers the increasingly (but extraordinarily dangerous) popular tendency to avoid what the accumulated history of knowledge and scientific progress tells us to be true. And so, perhaps it is another “Black Elephant” to observe that these “elephants” may be multiplying right now (paradoxically and quite sadly as their real-life versions dwindle in number due to poaching and encroachment on their natural habitat.)  Facing up to these “elephants” is something that calls for well-honed critical and creative thinking skills–whereby people of all backgrounds including, of course, artists–join forces in shedding new light and creating new possibilities for dealing with the challenges of today in a fact-based way.  This is in fact how mankind has conquered so many diseases that previously killed so many in childhood.  Understanding how innovative breakthroughs occur,and accelerating our society’s capacities for innovation in so many sectors, are right now key to survival on a collective level.

Fortunately there is more awareness of these challenges, as well as our own inherently human desire to ignore them–aided by the fact of more frequent “black elephant” and “black swan” events in the last two years alone.  It turns out this awareness extends well into the suites of CEOS around the world.  I refer in particular to a recent paper, Thinking the Unthinkable: A New Imperative for Leadership in a Digital Age, which I’ll turn to soon.  Last month I had an opportunity to hear the authors brief an audience on their research findings, and found their conclusions compelling enough to include in a revised syllabus for the coming semester of classes.  Interestingly, they too distinguish in their report between “Black Swans” and “Black Elephants”; the creatures of surprise are everywhere!

Illustration: Watercolor, gouache, ink, pencil, gesso, and coffee grounds by Black Elephant Blog author (2014)

But for now with another spring-like day of temperatures in the 60s Fahrenheit, it’s time to be out enjoying the warm December weather, and re-charging our own personal energy reserves for what promises to be a challenging 2017!   Best wishes to all for a joyous New Year!

Room with a View

With nearly all the people in this area still inside their houses after the snowstorm of the past 36 hours, a cardinal took a peek into the window today.

Illustration: Watercolor and pen and ink (Kuretake fine point black marker) on Arches Cold Press 140 1b watercolor paper by Black Elephant Blog author

Sunlight lit up the scene outside, creating dramatic shadow shapes on the snow, a real challenge to paint.

After a while, it was time to take a walk outside in this wonderland, following a small path stamped down by others who passed this way earlier. Next on this blog, a look at why  about one inch of snow that fell last Wednesday caused relatively more havoc in this area of about six million people than nearly 30 inches that fell yesterday. It turns out that, like snow blindness, “paradigm blindness” can affect our ability to see, and prepare for, what’s right in front of us.  This is related to material we will commence teaching in the university semester which begins this week, so it is good for me to review it.

Illustration: Watercolor sketch on Arches Cold Press 140 lb watercolor paper by Black Elephant Blog author

 

 

 

Museum Sketching and the Art of Serendipity

As the weather gets colder, sketchers tend to move inside.  Groups of them sometimes get together inside museums where, after an initial meet-and-greet, they disperse to go sketch before reconvening to share and discuss their results.

Sketching in museums presents many challenges not least of which is whether to stand or sit.

Often I will choose to sketch where I can sit because I can take my time noticing things about what I am sketching. This means more randomness in the selection of what I am sketching, as the choice relates more to the seat than the view.

Such an artificial constraint can be good as it forces me to focus on things I might ignore otherwise. And so it happened recently that the empty couch I spotted was facing this painting by Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Upon taking a seat, I realized that I knew nothing about him or this painting.

Photo of Painting by Antoine Watteau

The painting itself is quite challenging, and not one I normally would consider sketching.  Adding to the complexity of the scene is a sculpture on either side of this painting in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  One wonders why these three pieces are positioned together here.

Sketching, I’ve learned, helps you notice details you might otherwise miss. In a sense, sketching is a way of paying attention.  Some people describe it as a form of meditation.   And this sort of paying attention, as well as seeking out contradictions and analogies, are crucial to innovation, as was reported on just this past weekend in the New York Times on “How to Cultivate the Art of Serendipity.”    But, as this article discusses, we don’t know how to make processes fundamental to innovation happen reliably.

We do know many innovative breakthroughs involve uncovering possibly overlooked combinations.  Having a “wide horizon” is essential, according to Jaime Holmes, author of a book, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, discussed earlier on this blog. Holmes memorably noted that “recognition means closure, and it marks the end of thinking, looking, and listening.  When we recognize an object, we make unconscious assumptions about it.”   He emphasizes others’  research concluding the importance of having a process of “pulling insights from other fields,” also called an “analogy finder technique.” Ambiguity tolerance can be measured, moreover, he writes.   People’s “heightened need for closure” can be manipulated and people are more likely to jump to conclusions or “entrench their existing views” in conditions of uncertainty when instead “dwelling calming” within uncertainty “will help you make a more rational decision.”

Illustration: Watercolor and Platinum Carbon pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author  (watercolor added afterwards)

So back in the museum, at the end of an hour, by allowing a random thing like the placement of a couch affect the choice of subject to sketch, I ended up more curious about these art pieces in front of me. I learned, for instance, that Watteau was an innovator for his time, pushing the boundaries of the art world.

Photo:  Portrait of Antoine Watteau (Source: Wikipedia)

When our group of sketchers reconvened, it was possible to see others’ selections of sketching subjects and media. One could not fail to be impressed with the process of discovery evident in each one.  We gained some familiarity with new subjects even if we could not name them!

 

 

The Shape of the New (unfinished)

Already the week is nearly over and it’s been quite full, making it impossible to get through the nearly 500 pages of the new book, The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World. At least, I’ve made it through the section on Adam Smith, and partially through the section on Marx.  Still to come are the chapters on Charles Darwin and Thomas Jefferson. Amid warnings in the media about the state of the global economy, and on the heels of the UN General Assembly Meeting focused on sustainable development goals, it seems safe to say that this book is super timely. It’s clear that it’s well-written and thoughtful, making one want to know how the authors bring it all together in the end. It’s just that, with the spectacular weather we’ve been having, it’s been hard to avoid the stronger pull of the outdoors, and some very special sketching opportunities.

Illustration: Watercolor and pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

Apropos of the “shape of the new,” one of the sketching sessions this week occurred alongside the Cylburne Mansion in Baltimore where a metals magnate during the “Gilded Age” in the late 19th century built his home. Situated today on a large parkland which comprises the Cylburne Arboretum, this is a spectacularly beautiful place, where flowers and trees are abundant and crowds non-existent.  As one reads in The Shape of the New, the onset of the Industrial Age which gave rise to a new elite made mansions like this one possible in the late 19th century.

The Freer and Sackler Galleries were another stop earlier in the week on an equally majestic day weather-wise.  There is a small exhibit about the ancient city of Palmyra–once known as the “city of palms”–in modern-day Syria, there. It is impossible not to reflect on how the antiquities so recently destroyed managed to last, outdoors no less, for nearly two millennia up to our present times.

Illustration: Photo of the sculpture of Haliphat

Here it is possible to wonder where the shape of the new is headed.  The lone statue of an elegantly dressed and wise-looking young woman, known as “Haliphat,” seems to be trying to tell us something across the ages.  Unlike so much in Palmyra, she survives, here in this exhibit, so we may yet learn what this statue conveys across nearly 2,000 years.

On the way out, a muscular statue of a guard towered over us, and seemed to demand to be sketched.  He represents one of two guardians (the other was positioned at the far end of the hall) of Buddha and hails from the 14th century.

A subsequent post will return to The Shape of the New.

Illustration: Pencil and ink sketch by Black Elephant Blog author

Frame Innovation in Change-Resistant Organizations

An important book has accompanied the traveler/doodler author of this blog, making it possible, at least, to consider taking some notes on it.  The book is called Frame Innovation:  Create New Thinking By Design, by Kees Dorst (The MIT Press, 2015).  Dorst is a Professor of Design Innovation at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and at Endhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Sketchbook on-site illustrations: Pen and ink and watercolor by Black Elephant Blog author

As one reads the book, it is clear that the book’s author has been researching and developing case studies of the concept of design thinking–as applied to practical and often seemingly intractable social and urban problems–for many years.  Although the text of this book is necessarily abstract in places–explaining, for instance, the difference between traditional analytic approaches of “deduction,” and “induction” and design thinking approaches of “abduction” and design abduction”–the author is quick to remedy this through his use of case studies and helpful word-graphics. ((To fast-forward a moment to the topic of a future blog post or two, the basic issue here is a very big and momentous idea.  It is that our traditional methods of analytical reasoning, deduction and induction, “are not enough if we want to make something. If we want to create new things–or new circumstances–we need different approaches, for which even “normal abduction” (the reasoning pattern behind conventional problem-solving using tried and tested patterns of relationships) is insufficient.))

As explained in the series foreword by the editors of this new MIT Press series on design thinking and theory, design challenges today “require new frameworks of theory and research to address contemporary problem areas.”  Often problem-solving for modern challenges requires “interdisciplinary teams with a transdisciplinary focus.”  According to the editors, three contextual challenges define the nature of many design problems today.  These issues affect many of the major design problems that face us in whatever field we’re working.  They include:

–a complex environment in which many projects or products cross the boundaries of several organizations and stakeholder, producer, and user groups;

–projects or products that must meet the expectations of many organizations, stakeholders, producers, and users; and

–demands at every level of production, distribution, reception, and control.

Past environments “were simpler,” write the editors, and “made simpler demands.”   To meet modern challenges, experience and development are still necessary, but “they are no longer sufficient.”  “Most of today’s design challenges require analytic and synthetic planning skills that cannot be developed through practice alone,” they write.  What is needed, they say, is “a qualitatively different form of professional practice that emerges in response to the demands of the information society and the knowledge economy to which it gives rise.”

Designers today confront complex social and political issues, the editors note, quoting the work of Donald Norman, (“Why Design Education Must Change,” 2010).  What the authors are talking about is the fact that education today is not training professionals in ways to take integrated approaches to solve complex, inter-sector problems and imagining new futures.  The book by Kees Dorst is the first in the series and, based on this writer’s close reading of it, it represents an excellent start to this ambitious (and profoundly needed) project.

Dorst argues that society today is being “tripped up” by the “emergence of a radically new species of problem:  problems that are so open, complex, dynamic and networked that they seem impervious to solution.”  He writes:  “What all the news stories show us is that it makes no sense to keep trying to tackle these problems the way we used to.  The trusted routines just don’t work anymore.  These new types of problems require a radically different response.”

In the spirit of the focus of this blog–understanding “surprise” and the ways and whys for when we get “tripped up”–future posts will examine some of the important ideas in Dorst’s book.

AntiFragility in a World of Disorder

In today’s class, we discussed the topic of forced or “distressed” migration in connection with environmental stresses or shocks and–whether or not related to environmental issues–violent conflict.  We quickly discovered there is almost no issue which is not connected to this issue of distressed migration.  From food security to public health, and drought to early childhood education, a complex web of factors must be considered.  (Indeed, even recent findings in neuroscience on the relationship between cognitive development in children and poverty had a place in our discussion.)  The students concluded that even very local issues have global consequences. They debated ways to soundly approach the complexity of the issues involved.

Sketch: Pencil and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

The relevance of the topic, given news headlines these days, was obvious.  Some students emphasized the importance of adaptability, or resilience, in home countries for dealing with stresses and disasters.  Sometimes, however ,the stresses are too large, too many, and too frequent–and the basic functioning of the country too weak–for needed adaptation. It is mainly in such cases, when few other options exist, that people take the step of leaving their homes in search of a better future.  (These issues, said the students, include internally displaced people who must move elsewhere inside their country and exiles or migrants who are forced to leave, and who may even face the prospect of being “stateless.”)

Whether these people are called exiles, migrants, or refugees–or something else–sometimes depends on what international law covers, or not.  But, labels aside, these are people, said the students today, who probably would not be leaving their homes if they did not have to.  With more frequent and extreme weather events alone, however, freedom of mobility and opportunities for migration are poised to become larger issues around the world, observed some in the class today.

In connection with the issues of “anti fragility” or resilience, one might say that distressed migration occurs when countries become vulnerable and overextended.  While, in class, we consulted the work of known experts on human migration issues, outside of class literature unrelated to that specialized area can help reframe the issues involved.

For instance, the emerging concepts of “fragility” and “anti fragility,” as applied by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the book Antifragile, can help consider issues of migration (not the subject of his book) in different lights.  According to Taleb, systems such as societies and economies sometimes become fragile because “top-down” approaches make them so.  He writes: ” If about everything top-down fragilizes and blocks anti fragility and growth, everything bottom-up thrives under the right amount of stress and disorder.  The process of discovery (or innovation, or technological progress) itself depends on anti fragile tinkering, aggressive risk-bearing rather than formal education.”  In other words, highly static societies–even seemly highly stable ones–can be highly fragile, or subject to breakdowns.

Following such logic, it appears that nation-states can become more fragile due to policies imposed on them either by internal or external actors.  According to Taleb, in heavily top-down systems, this fragility sometimes can be masked, sometimes for a long time.  Some societal systems, he writes, “become antifragile at the expense of others by getting the upside (or gains) from volatility, variations, and disorder and exposing others to the downside risks of losses or harm.”  The masking of this fragility equates to what he calls “blow-up risks,” writing:

“…as we discovered during the financial crisis that started in 2008, these blowup risks-to-others are easily concealed owing to the growing complexity of modern institutions and political affairs.”  In his view, a few are benefiting from “anti fragility at the expense of the fragility of others.”

He also says that the “rare events” or “black swans”–(that are, in part, the subject of this blog)–paradoxically are increasing largely due to the increase of more complex man-made systems.  While technological know-how may be increasing, these same advances are “making things a lot more unpredictable.”  Modernity itself “makes us build Black Swan-vulnerable systems,” he writes.  And societal tendencies to focus on things we can estimate and measure encourage us to mistakenly think that we can calculate the risks and probabilities of shocks and rare events.  As he explains, we can’t but that doesn’t stop people (and entire industries) from convincing themselves and others that we can.

As the book, Antifragile, itself is composed of seven books, there is little point in trying to capture all of its key points in a blog post.  For purposes of this blog, the main thought in the book to explore further has to do with the interactions of complex systems leading to an increasing number of “rare events,” also known as unpredictable “Black Swans.”  Taleb writes: “The odds of rare events are simply not computable.  We know a lot less about hundred-year floods than five-year floods–model error swells when it comes to small probabilities.”

The students today were considering what makes countries more, or less, adaptable (or, to approximate what Taleb is addressing, “anti-fragile”) on the assumption that forced migration does not occur if solutions to problems are readily found at home.   Understanding how societies become and remain adaptive–particularly in a world of more frequent “rare events”–seems fundamental to finding more effective ways to deal with issues related to forced, or distressed, migration.  The real-life urgency of these issues for many people close by and far away is clear. In class, we will continue to grapple with the concepts involved and consider where things might be headed under different scenarios.

The Resilience Dividend

Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author (All Rights Reserved)

Island nations have been in the news alot lately, and not just because of the cyclone that hit Vanuatu recently.  There is new interest in islands and the subject of resilience.  It turns out that on this subject, conventional wisdom–as so often is the case–is not quite right.  Islands aren’t always more vulnerable and less resilient, according to some experts who will be speaking at an upcoming event, “Islands as Champions of Resilience,”sponsored by by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies in Washington, D.C.  At this event, the speakers will discuss replacing the prevailing notion of island nations as victims of climate change to “champions of resilience.”  I know of some people right now in island nations who would be very interested in these proceedings…

And since we have just discussed the concept of resilience in my class, and some people I know are presently preparing materials related to resilience, here are some notes on the subject.  This is a big subject and likely to spill over into a future post or two.

In her new book, The Resilience Dividend, Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, defines resilience as “the capacity of any entity–an individual, a community, an organization, or a natural system–to prepare for disruptions, to recover from shocks and stresses, and to adapt and grow from a disruptive experience.”  She notes that ideally one becomes more adept at managing disruption and skilled at “resilience building.”

The “resilience dividend,” according to Rodin, refers to new capacity that results from becoming more adept at managing disruption; as a result, one is “able to create and take advantage of new opportunities in good times and bad.”  Thus resilience is most definitely not about snapping back to the status quo ante.  It is not like a plastic ruler bent and then let go.  Instead, Rodin writes, resilience is “about achieving significant transformation that yields benefits even when disruptions are not occurring.”  The capacity for building resilience is one of the most urgent “social and economic issues” today, she writes, “because we live in a world that is defined by disruption”.  These disruptions run the gamut, from cyber-attacks, new strains of virus, a storm, economic surprises, a structural failure, civil disturbances, and so on, notes the author.

While there is nothing new about disruption, there are three disruptive phenomena that are “distinctly modern,” according to Rodin.  These are:  urbanization, climate change, and globalization.  These three factors are “intertwined,” she writes, and affect each other in a “social-ecological-economic nexus.”  And, “because everything is interconnected–a massive system of systems–a single disruption often triggers another, which exacerbates the effects of the first, so that the original shock becomes a cascade of crises.”  Rodin writes:  “A weather disturbance, for example, can cause infrastructural damage that leads to a public health problem that, in turn, disturbs livelihoods and creates widespread economic turmoil, which can lead to a further degrading of basic services, additional health problems, and even political conflict or civil unrest.”

According to Rodin, any entity can build resilience but “too often…resilience thinking does not really take hold until a galvanizing event or a major shock–such as Superstorm Sandy–brings the need into high relief.”  She describes her goal for her book as to help frame and contribute to the process of resilience by proving a template for thinking about, and methods for practicing, resilience.

Five Characteristics of Resilience

Rodin identifies five characteristics of resilience:

• Being Aware
• Diverse (different sources of capacity)
• Integrated (coordination of functions and actions across systems)
• Self-regulating
• Adaptive

Being aware is first because without awareness you have no idea what your strengths and weakness are, what threats and risks you face…and have no concept of all the aspects of a situation, which can include “the infrastructural elements, human dynamics, and natural systems–and how they interconnect.”

Being aware is not a static condition because circumstances can change rapidly with proliferating secondary effects, Rodin writes.  The fluidity of the operating environment for most of us requires what she calls “situational awareness”–which she defines as an “ability and willingness to constantly assess, take in new information, reassess and adjust our understanding of the most critical and relevant strengths and weakness and other factors as they change and develop.”  Rodin describes several methods for enhancing situational awareness, and references what psychologists call “mindfulness,”  Mindfulness is described as “a flexible cognitive state that results from drawing novel distinctions about the situation and the environment.”

In order to be mindful, says one of Rodin’s sources on the subject, one needs to be able to develop “new mental categories, to be open-minded, receptive to different and new perspectives and new information, and to focus on processes rather than outcomes.”  In this way, a “mindful” person is “more able to understand situations as they actually are, not as you assume they should be or always have been” and “thus to respond more quickly and appropriately.”

All this is enormously relevant to people in any field anywhere, given the complexity of the systems that make up modern life and what many are finding is the inadequacy of most inherited frameworks for dealing with that complexity.  Future posts will come back to this subject as it is both central to what we are learning our class this semester and useful material for various projects of mine.

The Health of Nations

Image Source: UNICEF Pacific/AFPGetty Images

The strong cyclone that swept through the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu yesterday occurred at the same time that government representatives, including the President of Vanuatu and the head of Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office, were meeting at a UN conference in Japan to devise a new global plan to reduce the risk of disasters such as this one.  According to media reports, Vanuatu has prepared for cyclones but not for one of this intensity.  There are reports that even the National Disaster Management Office’s emergency communications systems have been disrupted by the storm.  In a statement today, Oxfam Australia said that up to 90% of the housing in the capital of Port Vila  had reportedly been seriously damaged.  An Oxfam official said that this “is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.”

Although communications reportedly have been reestablished in the capital city, the extent of the devastation in Vanuatu, a country of 267,000 people spread out across 65 low-lying islands, is not yet clear, according to media reports.  The convergence of the cyclone and the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in the same weekend seems to underscore both a growing global reality of more frequent extreme weather events and increasing global recognition of the need for formal mechanisms to help societies prepare for the unexpected–whether from extreme weather events, disease outbreaks, or conflicts.

Illustration: Conte crayon by Black Elephant Blog author modeled upon “Rider and Fallen Foe” by Titian

As we have seen when regions undergo recurrent stresses and shocks, the health and well-being (or security) of any people’s “homeland” must unavoidably concern us all.  It turns out that resilience is a local issue with global consequences–with effects that eventually come home to roost. Ignoring what is happening on the other side of the world is not a viable option. Taking a larger view of the challenges is necessary–and may help with acquiring a larger perspective on possible responses.  We have much material and experience, as well as creativity, imagination, and resourcefulness to draw into the viewfinders.  The UN Secretary General has similarly observed that the rebuilding effort of Sendai, Japan, four years after it was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, is a reminder that “we must turn all of the painful lessons of disasters into new policies for a better future.”

What the officials at the UN meeting in Sendai, Japan have concluded is that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, powerful storms in the Asia-Pacific region and ongoing conflicts around the world are compelling reminders that “health and stronger health system capacities must be central to the new framework for managing disaster risk,” as reported by U.N. health agency officials today.  Public health is interconnected with, and a foundational requirement for, the ability to withstand disasters of all kinds. In whatever language it is conveyed, this message is relevant to all people of the world…  Threats and unwelcome surprises come in many forms; traditional means of defense, including walls and barricades, may no longer suffice. Different thinking and relationships may be needed.

Illustration: Graphite on paper by Black Elephant Blog author after “Group of Figures” sketch by Luca Cambiaso circa 1560s

As we have just completed a session on “Resilience” in the class I am co-teaching, for which we relied on some excellent materials from varied sources, my next blog post will assemble some notes in one place regarding some of the latest thinking and practices related to “resilience,” including what it is, and some of its characteristics.  How is resilience different from other sorts of preparedness and who needs to be involved?  How do we know when we are “resilient” enough in an age of high-impact, unknown probability risks?  Perhaps these notes–which draw from, among other sources, the helpful new book by Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, The Resilience Dividend–will be as useful to someone else as they have been to me recently!  As our class continues to explore:  Understanding more about resilience is important not only for island nations but for the health of nations generally.

Surprising Creatures

It wasn’t until I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, that my naturalist sensibilities became attuned to proliferating species of surprise. They are everywhere! As the years tick by, I have come to think that understanding the origins of surprise are fundamental to solving the greatest challenges of our times–including those so-called “black elephants!” (This is the main reason I am devoting a whole blog to the subject.)

How we learn, create, and share knowledge…how innovations occur…what role collaboration and teamwork play in fomenting breakthrough thinking…how the subconscious mind works with our conscious selves…how sparks of serendipity ignite new possibilities… All such themes and more belong in an examination of the “black elephants” of our times. But why am I talking about black elephants when I started with “black swans?” Clearly our taxonomy for surprising creatures needs attention. So let’s get started!

Before all these metaphors entered our lexicon, most of us were familiar with the thought cloud images from cartoons, showing a bright lightbulb over someone’s head! The lightbulb signified a new idea!!! Archimedes in the bathtub shouting “Eureka”…that’s another visual image of surprise.

Image: Google Images

But in recent years, particularly since the Financial Crisis of 2008, we’ve seen a stampede of elephants and hippos, flights of swans and hummingbirds, and pots of boiling frogs cross our fields of vision. What in the world is going on? Are we more prone to be surprised these days? Surprising creatures are helping us to make sense of these developments: let’s begin with the “black swan.”

The Black Swan…

Unless you live in Australia, black swans are rare and, according to Taleb, in most of the world–before the discovery of Australia–the absence of black swans led to an unexamined assumption that all swans are white. Such unexamined assumptions are typical to all of us: having a cognitive framework, or mental map of how the world works, enables us to function. The downside (one of many) to how we go about making sense of things normally is that our knowledge is limited by what we have observed or experienced. The size of our ‘sample set’–or real-world experiences–influences our concepts of reality and possibilities for the future.

Taleb tells us that his metaphor for a “black swan” event comprises three attributes:

• It is an “outlier” in the sense that it “lies outside the realm of regular expectations.” Nothing in our experience has prepared us for this possibility.
• It carries an extreme impact.
• It was “predictable” but only in hindsight! (Taleb says, our human nature persuades us, after experiencing an outlying event with an extreme impact, that it was predictable.)

In Taleb’s view, the way our human brain is wired makes what we don’t know more important than what we do know:

“Black Swans can be caused and exacerbated by their being unexpected,” he writes.

Our concept of what is “normal” tends to rule out outliers and uncertainty.  But, more and more, what we’re learning, from the “law of large numbers” and other principles of improbability, is that what seems normal often is not!  So, how do we manage in a world of surprising creatures like the black swan? It turns out that rare events are behind most breakthroughs in human history…so understanding how we get locked into assumptions, and when we need to unlock our assumptions, seems critically important not only to business success but perhaps survival in all its meanings.

Coming up: I’ll look at what Steven Johnson, the author of so many great books on where good ideas come from, says about the “hummingbird effect” in his new book, How We Got To Now. Why does it matter to know how we got to now?