« In a world of Black Swans, the first step is understanding how much we will never understand » Wired, about the book « The Black Swan » from Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I had bought this book years ago (March 2009 from the note used as a bookmark), and like with many others, had just begun to read it, busy with other things. With the COVID-19 crisis, I find it is often quoted in media or blog articles. So I took it back, decided to find out more about the analysis that Nassim Taleb makes of these highly improbable events.
I teach and use project management for a leaving. It mostly implies to plan the activities required to reach a goal, fulfill a need, with an IT system for example. It requires anticipating the necessary resources to manage these activities, and their costs, to schedule their tasks as well as all types of communication, amongst other things. But also identifying the risks, both threats and opportunities, that can be met during the project.
More and more, project management is first and foremost about identifying and handling those risks. What is called risk-driven project management. This makes a lot of sense today.
But even an experienced project manager should remain humble: there will always be « unk-unk », the unknown-unknown risks, the ones we cannot anticipate… the Black Swans.
to be continued…
What about you ? Do you think about risks in your daily life? In your professional life? Were you used to manage them before the COVID-19 crisis? Will that change now?
Let me know what you think !
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