“Disaster myopia”: Failing to learn the lessons of increased uncertainty

Financial or physical loss doesn’t only stem from “risk”! Risk we know a lot about. Dare I say that we understand, can quantify and influence (if not manage) risk? I would add one caveat though. Much of the accumulated data upon which probability and, therefore, rating is calculated, relates to a period which bears little resemblance to the world and civilisation as it is today…or will be in the future.

So what about the murky world of uncertainty that lies beyond risk? What do we know and what can we do to “deal with” that? Because that is what we are, increasingly, dealing with…

Today, there are fewer certainties.

Unfortunately, our habits of thought still make us look for linear trends and other simple patterns, and make us expect the future to be a recognizable version of the past. In many cases, we constrain our lives in an attempt to achieve such security, but in complex networks of competing businesses, in financial markets, in the world of emerging technology, and in politics, these expectations are out of place.

Organizations need to learn to distinguish between the kinds of problems that can be handled with traditional perspectives, where precise prediction and solution is possible, and the kinds of problems associated with unavoidable complexity.

Entrainment of thinking is an ever-present danger.

Mark Buchanan