[Version in French here]
The invasion of Ukraine is a rude awakening for a Europe that had been asleep for many years in a naive idealism. If the response to the invasion was quick, Europe remains very weak. Beyond the next few weeks, its strategy must involve a profound change of mental model for its economic development.
Continue readingPosted in Society, Strategic surprise, strategy
Tagged decision making, economy, Europe, mental model, Ukraine
[Version in French]
It takes a brutal shock to bring a dreamer back to reality. This is what has just happened to Europe with the invasion of the Ukraine, a transformative event which has led to a questioning of fundamental mental models. Will Europe finally get real?
Continue reading[Version française disponible ici]
The situation has become familiar with the covid-19 epidemics, and in particular with the controversy over the use of chloroquine: everyone has an opinion and groups are being formed in favor or against it. Yet regularly, people are being called to order by others who demand that only experts should be allowed to talk on issues relating to the management of the epidemy. The message seems to have been heard: for the past three weeks, doctors have been massively present on television sets. The country has become a large proxy medical consultation room. But the question remains: faced with a complex and unprecedented situation such as the coronavirus, who has the right to speak out? To what extent can experts be trusted? More importantly, how can the decision-maker work with them?
Posted in Strategic surprise, uncertainty
Tagged Covid-19, decision making, expertise, Management of uncertainty, prediction, uncertainty
[Version française ici]
The coronavirus constitutes a major event that completely disrupts world life, rendering all forecasts and plans based on them obsolete within a few weeks. The very nature of a surprise is to bring to light an element of our mental model (deep beliefs that guide our actions) and invalidate it. Our model told us that the world was going in direction A, but it turns out to be going in direction B and we are surprised. This surprise can have more or less serious consequences. Most of the time the reaction will be to dismiss it. When there is a difference between reality and our beliefs, we try at all costs to maintain the latter by inventing all sorts of reasons to minimize the meaning of surprise; it is a matter of integrity because our mental models are constitutive of our deep identity: how we see the world is also how we see ourselves, and how we are in the world. With the coronavirus, learning to manage our mental models has become critical.
Posted in Management, Strategic surprise
Tagged cosmological episode, Covid-19, Crisis, decision making, Karl Weick, mental model
[Version française ici]
In these times of coronavirus epidemic, I have the opportunity to talk to people from very different backgrounds (emergency doctors, researchers, self-employed people, entrepreneurs, retirees, business leaders, etc.) to understand how they “live” the current crisis both personally and professionally. From these discussions, I can draw three courses of action that a CEO can usefully adopt in the face of the extreme and unprecedented situation we are experiencing. Continue reading
The unexpected emergence of the coronavirus and its uncertain consequences remind us of four things that we should have known, or that we knew but did not apply about the environment in which we live: the unpredictability of the future, the difference between risk and uncertainty, the non-linearity of the evolution of the world, and the social construction of surprises.
The coronavirus, which is currently causing a major international crisis, is one of those unprecedented events that are taking us by surprise by making all the forecasters lie who, only three months ago for the New Year, were telling us what 2020 would be like. Should we be afraid of the virus? This is the question that each of us is asking, torn between the worry of not taking seriously what could turn out to be the epidemic of the Century and the fear of giving in to panic if its impact proves to be only modest, as Dr. Eric Caumes, head of the infectious diseases department at the French Hospital Pitie-Salpetriere, who recently declared: “If you are not afraid of the flu (up to 10.000 deaths/year in France), why are you afraid of the coronavirus?” This seems to make sense, and yet the comparison is not legitimate, because it ignores a very important distinction, that between risk and uncertainty, which a decision-maker must absolutely understand.
Posted in Management, Strategic surprise, uncertainty
Tagged Coronavirus, Covid-19, decision making, frank knight, Management of uncertainty, risk, uncertainty
My new Forbes piece, written with Milo Jones, is a take on W. Edwards Deming’s words: “Without data you’re just a person with an opinion.” In fact, in a big data world, it might just be the opposite: without an opinion, you’re just a person with data and you are in trouble. Read it here.
Philippe Silberzahn 