Have you ever seen a Black Swan the rare and unexpected Of course you have you're seeing one now

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Have you ever seen a Black Swan - the rare and
unexpected? Of course you have - you're seeing
one now!
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I was once in an earthquake

• Quite apart from the shock and natural fear, I
  experienced a feeling of complete lack of
  control.
• It was complete chaos, unprecedented in my
  experience.
• Buildings danced, the pavement jellified, the
  world became one large bouncing castle.
• The solid world I knew and trusted had become
  surreal.
• People chaotically ran in different directions,
  some on their own, some with other equally lost
  groups.
• Chaos. Panic.
• Some did nothing, reconciled to whatever came
  next.

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• After the first quake
• the president of the country came on television
  and radio to assure us that things were now under
  control and that the rescue services were on top
  of things.
• Of course no one believed him.
• There were no assurances to be had.
• And we were given assurances before and we
  naively believed them.
• During all of this I noticed that some remained
  calm.
• They moved people to safer places, turned off
  electrical and other equipment, halted traffic.
• They seemed to trust that it would stop and come
  right at some stage and for now it was a matter
  of minimising the damage and being ready for when
  things returned to normality even if it was a new
  form of normality.
• I heard rumours that a priest in a church that
  had been filled with gaudy alabaster statues of
  every possible saint, took advantage of the
  earthquake to topple over some statues that the
  earthquake had not succeeded in toppling!
• .

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A BLACK SWAN!

• The present economic and social situation feels
  somewhat similar.
• The world has become surreal.
• A Black Swan has appeared.
• The most improbable has happened.
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book The Black
  Swan, written long before the present surreality
  happened, describes these kinds of moments as
  Black Swans things that we have never seen
  before and, based on that premise, presume that
  they dont exist or will never exist.
• So we take life as being normal and predictable,
  and plan and work on that basis.
• Black Swans have three characteristics, he says
• 1. They lie outside the realm of regular
  expectations.
• 2. They carry an extreme impact.
• 3. We concoct explanations for them after the
  event.

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Good, good you say, but what good is that to me
now?

• Well we still have choices and like the people
  in the earthquake I described we can
• 1. Panic and run anywhere
• 2. Become reconciled and wait
• Minimise the damage and get ready for the
  normal to return however different that
  normal may be
• Take advantage of the situation to get rid of
  practices and systems that were really of no use
• The thing about earthquakes and Black Swans is
  that they do happen and we have to live with the
  reality that they can happen, with a world in
  which they do happen and now in a world in which
  they have happened.
• This calls for a special and different way of
  working from the normal, which is based on a
  false view of the world anyway, as Taleb says.
• We have to see the world in a very different way
  - fluid, changing, quite unpredictable, chaotic
  in fact - and we have to learn to work well
  within this world.

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We describe this as being like working in two
different worlds
SUCCESS
CERTAINTY
THE UNKNOWN
RELIABILITY
SPECULATION
STANDARD OR OPERATIONAL WORLD
CHAOTIC OR CREATIVE WORLD
RISK-TAKING
SAFETY
NEWNESS
RULES
ROUTINE
EXPERIMENTAL
PREDICTABILITY
UNPREDICTABLE
OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE
The dynamics operating in the Chaotic World are
completely different from those that prevail and
work well in the Standard or Operating world.
They also call for new and very different
attitudes, skills and processes.
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These are skills and processes that we in Maybe
possess

• We are experts in dealing with Black Swans and
  in helping organisations to not only deal with
  but take advantage of the unknown, the
  uncertainty to not only survive earthquakes
  but to emerge stronger, better prepared,
  improved.
• Companies and all kinds of organisations call us
  in at times like this to work with them in
  various formations of people to come up with a
  flexible and effective way to handle the kind of
  chaos in which we now find ourselves.
• To feel their way out of it, to learn from it,
  to make the most of it, to gain advantage from it
  or maybe just to survive it.
• One good half-day session can bring enormous
  benefit.
• Getting different minds coming together to share
  and combine their different perspectives on the
  situation and working to create a new way forward
  creates enormous brain power, is enormously
  effective and seems to us the only realistic way
  of handling this particular chaos.
• If you would like to talk to us about any of
  these issues

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Contact
Brian F. Smyth Maybe International 27 Fitzwilliam
SquareDublin 2Ireland T 353 1 825 6554 E
brian_at_maybe.ie W www.maybe.ie