Co-hosts Jim Love, CIO of ITWC, and Doug Sparkes, a lecturer at the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, open the eight-minute program with an extended football metaphor to describe how things break down – both on the sports field and in business – when someone comes up with a play that isn’t anticipated.
The challenge for companies, according to Sparkes, is how to plan for and respond to what author Nassim Nicholas Taleb called a Black Swan event: an occurrence that is unpredictable results in severe and widespread consequences and is later believed to have been predictable.
It may seem futile to spend any amount of time planning for unpredictable and potentially catastrophic events, but that’s where the excitement begins for both Love and Sparkes. What’s behind their optimistic enthusiasm? They know there’s a time-tested method for planning for and surviving world disruptions, and they have the example of a large, global company that developed a strategy for not only predicting seemingly impossible events but also for helping to implement initiatives that were planned before the disruptions occurred.
For lively banter, compelling anecdotes, and a time-tested way to deal effectively with those dreaded black swans, grab a coffee and tune in to You Need a New Playbook.
