Author: Michele Wucker

I rang in the new year with a quick trip to Beijing for a few speeches and media appearances. It was an interesting time, given concerns over the trade war with the United States and the Chinese government’s efforts to manage a slowing economy. From reading most Western media, you might think all of the economic slowdown was the fault of the trade war. Only a few Western commentators “get” that China’s slowdown is the result of sensible, deliberate policies designed to slowly let the air out of credit bubbles instead of pumping them bigger until they pop. China’s economic…

In November, I wrote here about my courageous friend Mina Guli. Mina who set out on a quest to run 100 marathons in 100 consecutive days around the world to draw attention to water scarcity, which the World Economic Forum ranks among the top global societal risks in terms of impact. Mina’s journey has taken an unexpected but ultimately inspiring turn. In early January, weeks of running in pain forced Mina to downgrade her speed to walking, now taking nine to twelve hours to finish each marathon instead of four to five. She tried shuffling and using walking poles to help, but her journey…

Gray Rhino & Company CEO Michele Wucker spoke at the Netease Impact Summit in Beijing January 5, 2019, on the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the future of work. Watch and find a transcript at this link: https://3g.163.com/money/article/E4ON4CTB00259CBS.html

Michele Wucker talks with the FT’s Matt Klein about why we don’t deal with problems we see in advance – and how to fix it- on the January 18, 2018 edition of FT Alphachat, the conversational podcast about business and economics produced by the Financial Times in New York. Each week, FT hosts and guests delve into a new theme, with more wonkiness, humour and irreverence than you’ll find anywhere else. LISTEN HERE. After Chinese President Xi Jinping’s annual New Year’s address, it has become an annual tradition for Chinese media to scour his bookshelf for new titles. In 2018, the…

How has the world been doing in confronting its most obvious but unresolved risks in 2018? This was the third year that Gray Rhino & Company compiled a list of top Gray Rhino risks –a meta analysis of dozens of top risks lists– and tracked how the most obvious yet unresolved risks have evolved throughout the year. It’s time for an end-year wrap-up, which follows the trends we identified in our mid-year review over the summer. Analysts broadly agreed at the beginning of the year that the top risk was monetary policy errors. How well the world did in addressing this depends on how you…

You may have read the news that University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently took out an insurance policy to protect itself from a steep fall in Chinese student enrollment in case of a visa policy or other external shock. The university estimates that it would lose $60 million a year were it to completely lose Chinese students, who generally pay full tuition and thus help to subsidize American students. The increasingly heated rhetoric about China and the nosedive in the relationship between the two countries certainly ups the risk of a drop in Chinese student enrollment. But it’s part of a much bigger…

As George H.W. Bush is laid to rest, Americans mourn a man who – even to many of those who disagreed with him on policy – represented an era of greater civility and cooperation, and putting the greater good above one’s own interests. It’s hard to forget his famous campaign pledge, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” or the consequences of his breaking that pledge. Of course, in the autumn of 1990 he went back on his words. But if ever there was occasion to break a promise, this was one. Interest rates were rising, supply side economics were not…

The central paradox of the inexorable advance of artificial intelligence and automation is that some of the most important ways humans will add value in the future are activities that we undervalue now: social interactions, creativity, and caregiving. But how do we change the culture to be able to monetize those contributions? For centuries, compensation has been minimal to nothing for caring for children and aging parents. The recent expansion of the service economy has created many caregiver jobs, but these tend to be low paid. Our economy doesn’t reflect how important the human touch is, much less that it…

Those of you familiar with my work know how important I believe it is to make better decisions by getting a variety of voices around the table, thus avoiding groupthink and making room for important perspectives you might otherwise miss. But what if you’ve got the right minds around the table but they don’t get heard? That’s why I was so intrigued when I learned about a Kickstarter for Inclusion Meeting Cards, a project from the Chicago based software development company Table XI. The game is a simple, tangible, non-confrontational tool for reorienting discussion, using humor to defuse potentially tense interactions like telling…

Michele Wucker published on the strategy + business blog on November 16, 2018 Imagine that your company is kicking off two projects. The first one entails the assumption of big risks, but it will pay off in a major way for the company if it succeeds. You need to pick one of your team members to run it, someone who manages risk well while under stress. The second project is considerably lower profile, and its manager will need to be someone who can operate autonomously in a situation where no level of risk is tolerable. Your top two lieutenants are…