You know, it’s easy to see what’s there but what if you miss what’s missing? I sometimes miss the obvious, and that’s usually what isn’t there unless I am looking for that particular thing. when we have to discover several missing items, then it becomes a challenge.
This is where risk becomes important. At work I am often asked to assess risk. Risk isn’t always obvious. It can be what you know, a known risk. It could be something you don’t know but could happen, a known unknown. Finally, it could hit you out of the blue, an unknown unknown.
I read a book called “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s a great book that explains surprises. The title comes from white swans that anyone has ever seen in Europe. They assumed that all swans were white. Then, after Europeans got back from Australia bringing a black swan, it shocked everyone. No one in Europe ever saw a black swan until that day. The impossible became possible.
Crazy right, but it’s true, things happen, good and bad, that we never see coming. So many predictions are wrong because there’s an unknown unknown. If we don’t see it coming then how can we prepare or predict?
Things happen that we don’t expect, so don’t be shocked that no one saw it coming. Instead, learn what the unknown is and react the best way you know how.