![\"\"](\"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black_swan-300x201.jpg\" "\\"Alexas_Fotos")
Image credit: Alexas_Fotos \/ Pixabay<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n One week we all thought we had our responses dedicated to supply chain disruptions. By the next week it was protecting our associates and employees. \u00a0And by the third week, we witnessed mass panic shopping, closures of most all venues, limits to how many could be in a store at once, empty shelves and much more. Most every white-collar worker was telecommuting. \u00a0What could follow? \u00a0Have you called your team to brainstorm the next steps in this ever-moving black swan event?<\/p>\n The\u201d black swan\u201d event questions <\/strong><\/p>\n How do you avoid being sideswiped by the new product you never saw coming, or by the \u201cblack swan\u201d event no-one ever thought of that might threaten your business?<\/p>\n Speaking with a roundtable group of fellow associates, most all of them CEOs, we addressed this question and spent an hour brainstorming how to protect against just such a lack of forward vision.<\/p>\n Scenario planning: \u201cWhat if?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n One CEO stated that she engages regularly in scenario planning with her executives, asking \u201cwhat if\u201d questions to explore the edges of the group\u2019s thinking about everything from disruptions of supply to changes in customer taste to acts of God such as floods, worldwide virus attacks, or earthquake.\u00a0 The group agreed that this is an excellent process, engaging the entire team and members\u2019 experience to explore the unknown.<\/p>\n But what if no-one thinks of the right questions?<\/strong><\/p>\n [Email readers, continue here…]\u00a0<\/em> <\/span>\u00a0 But what if no one in the group thinks to ask the pertinent question that leads to the most impactful unknown?\u00a0 What if that threat is outside of the experience of anyone in the room?\u00a0 What if no one knows what to ask?<\/p>\n Using fiction for clues to the new reality<\/strong><\/p>\n And how about \u201cContagion\u201d and the many books and movies about pandemics?<\/p>\n Broadening our frame of reference<\/strong><\/p>\n Our frame of reference must be as broad as possible when asking \u201cwhat if\u201d questions to protect our future.\u00a0 Read more science fiction if you are involved in technology.\u00a0 Read more disaster novels to expand your thinking to the very edge, even if only for a minute as you examine what and how to react to the unknowns that are sure to someday challenge us.<\/p>\n And stay safe as new coronaviruses seem to infect the world\u2019s population every twenty years or so. \u00a0Plan even now for the next one which will surely arrive on our shores after this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Great executives and managers seem to intuitively know what they don\u2019t know.\u00a0\u00a0 But it is not at all uncommon to not even know what questions to ask. Who would have thought about COVID 19 and public’s panic responses? One week … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Empty-shelves.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
Another CEO chimed in with an answer that made us all think.\u00a0 Most every technology advance has been predicted in works of fiction years before the fact, he stated.\u00a0 Why not look to fiction for clues?\u00a0 From devastating events like tsunamis to future user interfaces predicted in such films as Star Trek<\/em> or Minority Report<\/em>, there are liberating clues within the experiences of most of us.\u00a0 Think of Flash Gordon<\/em> or Dick Tracy<\/em>, characters from many decades ago with communication devices that have not only come to life but have been far surpassed the reality.\u00a0 Tom Cruise\u2019s virtual handling of graphics by hand movements came true only a few years later, even popularized as a game with Microsoft\u2019s Kinect system driven by body movement alone.<\/p>\n