Expect the unexpected

How do you “expect the unexpected”? It sounds contradictory, like those future-oriented strategists who talk about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. Is this alchemy? Some strange magic?

There’s a story told of a Thanksgiving Turkey whose life is bliss for one thousand days. Life is comfortable in the yard, food and water are plentiful, and scratching for bugs in the grass brings endless joy. For their whole life, the Thanksgiving Turkey assumes life will continue like this…and then comes Day 1001!

There is no concept of Day 1001 for the turkey. No evidence could be presented from their life to that point to suggest such a fateful ending is imminent. And yet Day 1001 arrives, very unexpectedly, and devastatingly so, from the turkey’s point of view.

This story, courtesy of statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, came to mind seeing a dozen or more black swans on a recent trip for a family wedding this past weekend (and partly why the delay in this week’s #the40project). Alas, the zoom lens on the iPhone of a few generations back couldn’t adequately capture the moment, but here’s the evidence anyway.

When 17th century Dutch explorers first stumbled upon black swans on the West Coast of Australia, there was no frame of reference for them. They were very familiar with white swans, but a black swan was an extraordinary rarity, and very much unexpected. Yet?before their eyes was a multitude of them, far beyond their comprehension. It’s little wonder that Derbal Yaragan was given the name Swan River when the colony was first established.

Taleb uses the metaphor of the Black Swan to symbolise those events which are extremely rare, but which might be possible, and which have significant impact. Importantly, the benefit of hindsight is then applied as a sort of “we should have seen this coming” explanation and justification, which may not always be helpful.

Perhaps you can think of a situation which could be classified as a Black Swan, either in your personal or professional life. Perhaps it’s not as large a scale as the 9/11 attacks in New York City (which is often cited as one of the more obvious examples), but it caused significant impact for you – a physical ailment, a relationship betrayal, an unjust decision. How did you respond to it? What impact did it have on your work, your life, your heart, your soul? Is the impact ongoing still? What sustained, or sustains, you through it?

While we often think of the need to build resilience to cope with the waves and winds of life, Taleb presents us with a different perspective. Rather than breaking and needing to rebuild, or what he calls being “fragile”, he invokes the “anti-fragile”, a way of responding through culture and capability so as not to collapse under the weight of even the blackest of swans.

An antifragile culture is one that grows through the chaos of the Black Swan event, despite its impact. While all possibilities can never be fully known in advance (there’s the unknown unknowns again), when they do come there is opportunity for learning and growth through the experience. As Taleb notes, “antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better” (Taleb, 2012, p. 430). It is an invitation to embrace the moment with an eye to ongoing growth.

That might sound na?ve, or perhaps idealistic, but there is a curious realism worth considering. Bad things will happen, and we can never avoid them entirely. To think we can is definitely unrealistic. It’s part of the human condition. I can’t control when, where, or how a Black Swan might visit me. I can, however, see it as a moment to grow, to become stronger, to become more robust, to become antifragile.

It’s a sharp contrast to other perspectives in our contemporary world. We do prefer when things go smoothly, when things are peaceful, but that’s rarely the case for extended periods of time.

Some Orthodox Christians express the sentiment in their approach to what they expect from God. When they’re in times of difficulty, their petition is not “God fix this up for me so I don’t have to suffer” but “may You sustain me through these challenges”. It’s an antifragile attitude, for sure.

By the way, for the family raising the Thanksgiving Turkey, Day 1001 is not a surprise at all, thus not a Black Swan event for them. What might be a challenge for me is not necessarily the same for others, even when they might be in a similar situation.

And curiously, in the same way those Dutch explorers found the appearance of a black swan outside the bounds of their experience, the appearance of a white swan in Australia shows sometimes Black Swans might also be white.

Reference

Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House.

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