The Gray Rhino : How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore by Michele Wucker

 After hearing Michele Wucker's TedTalk and long after I read The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, I decided to read her book on gray rhinos. She contends that many social phenomenon that receive the label of black swan actually come under the designation of gray rhinos.  As the title, The Black Swan suggests, events occur unexpectedly and without warning. Gray rhinos, in contrast, result in "highly obvious but ignored threats" (p. x) or respond insufficiently, weakly, and ineffectively. Among past "clear dangers that were recognized but weren't being addressed" (p. x), Wucker listed: climate change, financial crises, digital technologies, infrastructure failures, wildfires, water shortages, and others. 

To distinguish the types of events that individuals, organizations, agencies, governments and others face, Wucker categorized them according to four characteristics: low probability and high probability and low impact and high impact. Of the three types, white swans, black swans, and gray rhinos, she placed each into one of the four slots. White swans have a high probability of occurrence and low impact. In contrast, black swans and gray rhinos have high impact. However, black swans have low probability and gray rhinos have high probability. With any risky situation, the faster the response, the lower the cost.  

Leaders, who procrastinate when confronted with major challenges, ignore the opportunity or the avoidance of danger that the challenges offer. Wucker views this as the counterpart to danger. Assessing risk is inherent in the avoidance of danger or calamity. Each year at the World Economic Forum, assembled leaders in government, business, media, and Non-governmental Organizations prioritize what they consider the greatest risks in the Global Risks report. The United Nations conducts a similar survey. "In 2013, only 32 percent of those CEOs believed the economy was on track to meet the demands of a growing population within environmental and resource constraints, and just 33 percent believed that business was doing enough to meet those challenges" (p. 12). 

Behaviors that prevent action include many reactions: freezing and a lack of any response or denial and ignoring the threat. These reactions describe the first stage of the gray rhino response. The other four responses, according to Wucker, include" muddle along. . .come to an alert. . .play the blame game as we search for solutions. . .and, finally, we do something--occasionally before the trampling, but all too often after the fact" (p.27). These five responses constitute the five phases that most go through. To create a culture vigilant about gray rhinos or any of the other threats, "change perverse incentives in order to encourage leaders to act sooner, and uses out understanding of the weaknesses of human nature to make us more likely to do the right things" (p.27). In short, leaders thwart groupthink and encourage diverse and independent thinking. 

Project directors of the Good Judgment Project identified traits that separated a good forecaster from others: "First were psychological factors: 'inductive reasoning, pattern detection, open-mindedness and the tendency to look for information that goes against one's favored views, especially combined with political knowledge.' Second was the forecasting environment, including training in probabilistic reasoning and team discussion of rationales. Finally, not surprisingly, effort made a difference; the more time forecasters spent deliberating their predictions, the better they did" (p. 50).