Many thanks to ANIMA Asset Management, ROI Edizioni, and Salone del Risparmio for a wonderful launch of the Italian edition of The Gray Rhino in Milan May 17, 2023.
Il rinoceronte grigio: Come prevedere e affrontare i pericoli ovvi che spesso ignoriamo
Michele’s latest book, YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK, is now available in Taiwan in traditional/complex Chinese characters as “Find the Gray Rhino in Your Life: Knowing Your Risk Fingerprints and turning a Crisis into Opportunity,” published by Commonwealth (Tianxia/World Culture imprint).
Use your browser translator (if needed) to read this profile in Global Views Monthly Magazine published on occasion of the book launch.
Watch video highlights (in English with traditional Chinese character subtitles) below:
If the nobody-could-have-seen-it-coming black swan metaphor was the narrative of the 2008 market meltdown, author and strategist Michele Wucker’s highly probable, obvious “gray rhino” metaphor tells the story of the crisis we are in today.
Amid the double calamities of the COVID-19 pandemic and market meltdown, both of which followed repeated public warnings that went ignored, the gray rhino has struck a chord and generated a flood of headlines around the world.
Crisis Response Journal recently called the gray rhino “A metaphor for our times.” The UK financial magazine, New Model Advisor, made the gray rhino the cover story of its new issue, relegating the black swan to a sidebar.
Nassim Taleb, who coined the term “black swan” for highly improbable and unforeseeable events, has declared on twitter and in multiple interviews, including on Bloomberg News, that the combined pandemic and financial crisis was and is not a black swan. It was neither unforeseeable nor even improbable.
Michele coined the term “gray rhino” to draw attention to the obvious risks that are neglected despite – indeed, often because of– their size and likelihood. The gray rhino metaphor has moved markets, shaped financial policies, and made headlines around the world. She introduced it at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos in 2013, and developed a five-stage analytical framework in her 2016 book, THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world and influenced China’s financial risk strategy.
Michele’s recent Washington Post op-ed challenged the tired black swan trope that has given portfolio managers and policy makers a convenient “nobody saw it coming” cop-out when they ignore obvious dangers: “Let’s trade the black swan for the gray rhino: a mind-set that holds ourselves and our government accountable for heeding warnings and acting when we still have a chance to change the course of events for the better instead of waiting for a crisis to act.” The Wall Street Journal quoted her Washington Post article, offering the gray rhino as an alternative to the black swan.
Axios, Fast Company, and The Economist’s The World Ahead podcast have adopted the gray metaphor to describe this crisis. The term also has made pandemic and financial collapse related headlines in Australia, China and Taiwan (too many articles to link), Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Middle East, South Africa, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic, Chile, Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico.
The black swan has been misused to normalize complacency. By contrast, the gray rhino provides an alternative that challenges decision makers to be held accountable for failing to prepare for and head off clear and present dangers.
It provides not only a new way to think about the twin pandemic and financial crises, but also a framework for how we can do a better job holding decision makers accountable when they fail to keep threats from turning into catastrophes. As Crisis Response Journal put it, the gray rhino is indeed a metaphor for our times.
The Washington Post published an op-ed by Michele Wucker, “No, the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t an ‘unforeseen problem’,” published on March 17, 2020.
“An obsession with the “unforeseeable” black swan metaphor has promoted a mentality that led us straight into the mess we’re in now: a sense of helplessness in the face of daunting threats and a sucker’s mentality that encourages people to keep throwing good money after bad. And the facile willingness to see crises as black swans has provided policymakers cover for failing to act in the face of clear and present dangers from climate change to health care to economic insecurity. This accountability vacuum has pervaded U.S. policy on financial risk and on the pandemic,” she wrote, calling for readers to use the coronavirus crisis as a catalyst for adopting a more pro-active response to the obvious risks we tend to ignore. “Let’s trade the black swan for the gray rhino: a mind-set that holds ourselves and our government accountable for heeding warnings and acting when we still have a chance to change the course of events for the better instead of waiting for a crisis to act,” she wrote. Read the full article HERE.
Ben Zimmer of The Wall Street Journal quoted the Washington Post piece in an article published March 19, 2020 online and in print in the Weekend edition: ‘Black Swan’: A Rare Disaster, Not as Rare as Once Believed [paywall], noting her challenge to the black swan trope –for unknowable, unforeseeable events– which became popular during the last financial crisis.
The Gray Rhino is now available in Norwegian via Hegnar Media
Et «grått neshorn» er en høyst sannsynlig trussel med store konsekvenser som likevel blir oversett – beslektet med både elefanten i rommet og en uforutsigbar sort svane. Grå neshorn er ikke tilfeldige overraskelser, men dukker opp etter en rekke advarsler og tydelige tegn. Boligboblen som sprakk i 2008, de omfattende ødeleggelsene etter orkanen Katrina og andre naturkatastrofer, de nye digitale teknologiene som snudde medieverdenen opp ned, Sovjetunionens sammenbrudd … alt var mulig å forutsi.
Hvorfor klarer ledere og beslutningstagere fremdeles ikke å forholde seg til åpenbare trusler før disse ikke lenger lar seg kontrollere? I Grå neshorn benytter Michele Wucker seg av sin omfattende bakgrunn innen kriseledelse og utforming av politikk og av dyptgående intervjuer med ledere fra hele verden, og viser hvordan man identifiserer og imøtegår strategisk kommende trusler som har store konsekvenser. Grå neshorn er full av overbevisende historier, eksempler fra virkelighetens verden og praktiske råd, og er nødvendig lesning for ledere, investorer, planleggere, strateger og enhver som ønsker å forstå hvordan man kan tjene på å unngå å bli trampet ned.
Medlemspris: 351,-
Spar: 118,- (veil. pris 469,-)
ISBN:9788271463472
Forfatter:Michele Wucker
Forlag:Hegnar Media
Språk:Norsk
Utgivelseår:2018
After Chinese President Xi Jinping’s annual New Year’s address, it has become an annual tradition for Chinese media to scour his bookshelf for new titles. In 2018, the new books include The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, which was released in China in February 2017.
Other new economics books include textbooks on ecological economics, W.W. Rostow’s 1960 classic The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, and Money Changes Everything by William N Goetzmann. The bookshelf also included texts on understanding artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and machine learning, including The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos and Augmented by Brett King. Very good company!
Read the whole list here in Shanghaiist or, if your Chinese (or your browser translator) is good, a longer article on qq.
THE GRAY RHINO is now available in Taiwan via Commonwealth Books.
Zhang Bo Song reviewed the book on Inside: “One of the hottest topics of the year is the Grey Rhino. If you don’t understand what the gray rhino is and what’s the difference with a black swan, be sure to take a look at this book. Because you don’t want to wait until the grey rhino is charging at you: you want to act.”
Economic Daily: Don’t Turn a Blind Eye to a Gray Rhinoceros Crisis April 17, 2017
Tai Zhong, DWNews Taiwan “Gray Rhinoceros Phenomenon and Taiwan government” April 26, 2017 “In April 2017, the financial book “The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore” caused the attention of Taiwan’s people, Then “gray rhinoceros” following the “black swan,” became a common word on the media.”
September 2, 2016
The European Union has known since the creation of the euro that the currency was bound for trouble if did not create workable ways to adjust for the wide differences among its national economies. Yet well into its second decade, its failure to do so threatens the currency’s future. The deadly defects in ignition switches and airbags at General Motors and Takata, and the emissions test fixing at Volkswagen were hardly a secret inside the companies, which covered them up instead of correcting them. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change caused by human activity, temperatures keep rising, with this July marking the hottest month ever recorded.
The reasons are different in each case, but the pattern is the same: humans consistently fail to respond to looming dangers, at astronomical costs in lives, money, reputation, and lost opportunities. Once you start looking at how many crises began with clear but essentially ignored warning signals, it becomes strikingly clear how often we miss opportunities to head off predictable problems.
Too many people take for granted that we cannot react in time to change the course of the disasters even when they are right in front of us. It’s well past time to challenge this assumption.