Life has been incredibly busy for the past month as two projects I have been working on have taken huge steps forward. Early last year I read a book called Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and it changed my life. More specifically, it changed the way I directed my time and effort.
The book is about probability and I read it on recommendation from my colleagues in high hazard safety. However, there are several messages for everyone aiming to achieve in the book, more general messages about what to focus on and how to recognise opportunities. In turn the understanding of improbability can define the risks we take in all areas of our lives.
Taleb is an ex stock market commodities trader who has studied probability and devised an interesting way of understanding the improbable, and consequently dealing with it. For me, an early light bulb moment in the book was that we trick ourselves into relying on mathematical predictions to tell us what will happen in the future, then take steps to stop things happening. Taleb points out that no matter what we do, bad things will happen at some point. Plenty of blame and finger pointing goes on around natural hazards such as earthquakes and tsunami’s, storms and freak weather. In reality, it’s going to happen anyway and the best we can be is prepared.
In the wake of the floods in the UK in the past few years, and the more recent snow storms, members of the public appeared on TV blaming local councils, weathermen, and anyone else they could think of, and proclaiming that ‘something should be done about it’. People stuck in (pre-warned) snow in the spring complained that ‘something should be done to stop it’. Or, as they were fore-warned, should they have ventured out in the first place? They saw the Black Swan but ignored it. As one safety professional told me recently, were counting down to the next natural (or otherwise) disaster and remaining as prepared as we can be.
However, this thinking also applies to good things. Just as bad things can come along at any time, so can good things. It’s just that we are conditioned to pay more attention to the disasters and miss the opportunities.
Another startling message from the Black Swan is, well, the Black Swan itself. Taleb tells us that the Black Swan is a metaphor for the unexpected or improbable, and that if we have a good Black Swan opportunity appear in our lives, take advantage as they are so rare. Can you perpetuate them for yourself? You can certainly prepare the water for the Black Swan. The best ideas are those that are scalable, or, as I like to describe it, maximum income for minimum effort. Taleb warns that to do this, the best ideas must be scalable on a major basis. This means that one unit invented or created can be sold on license or contacted to be made into multiple units without further addition to the idea.
So I set about testing this theory last year by making pieces of work which I then submitted to people or organisations that I knew could help me to make them scalable. During this time I worked exclusively on scalable ideas, under the presumption that it would take a long time to submit and for the ideas to be evaluated. Some of the work involved selecting the correct organisation or people to evaluate these ideas.
Two weeks ago I spotted not one, but two Black Swan opportunities on the horizon. This is highly improbably statistically, but all the same, they appeared within minutes of each other.
So, combining the idea that events are not predictable, and anything can happen at any time (and that this applies to good events as well as bad events), and that the most successful ideas are scalable, I’ve radically changed my thinking. From now on I’ll be considering how scalable my ideas are, finding the best people or organisations to assist me with and watching out for the flapping of wings.