Author: Michele Wucker

THE GRAY RHINO is now available in Taiwan via Commonwealth Books. Zhang Bo Song reviewed the book on Inside: “One of the hottest topics of the year is the Grey Rhino. If you don’t understand what the gray rhino is and what’s the difference with a black swan, be sure to take a look at this book. Because you don’t want to wait until the grey rhino is charging at you: you want to act.” Economic Daily: Don’t Turn a Blind Eye to a Gray Rhinoceros Crisis April 17, 2017 Tai Zhong, DWNews Taiwan  “Gray Rhinoceros Phenomenon and Taiwan government” April 26, 2017 “In April 2017,…

THE GRAY RHINO is now available in translation in China, published by Citic Publishing Group. READ MORE on Rednet “Gray Rhino: How to Deal with the Probability Crisis”: Looking for Opportunities from Crisis Events (You may need a browser translator.) READ MORE on Sohu “Harvard MIT Microsoft hot digital transformation is a “gray rhinoceros” event” (You may need a browser translator.) UPDATE March 23: THE GRAY RHINO is a bestseller in China, already in its third printing in just over a month since its release!

What will keep investors and policy makers up at night in 2017? For the second year in a row, I’ve sorted through lists of predictions and top geo-political and geo-economic “gray rhino” risks: the highly obvious, probable threats that may or may not be getting the attention and responses they need to be averted. More often, the answer is “not.”

New year, new forecasts. A January ritual, the issuing of lists of top risks and predictions for the year ahead, is well under way. These lists make it harder to say “Nobody saw it coming.” Or at least they ought to. Never underestimate humans’ ability to turn our attention away from what’s right in front of us. The global, cross-sector scope of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, combined with its assessments of both impact and likelihood, make it the gold standard. The top right hand quadrant –highly likely, high impact– is where gray rhinos lurk. I particularly like the report’s feature analyzing the…

I want to share with you a simple tool that two people whose work I respect highly use regularly to improve decision making and head off gray rhinos: the humble Post-it Note. One of the key take-aways from THE GRAY RHINO is that we need to pay more attention to ideas from people who are less likely to speak out or be heard. Because we are biased to over-weight information that is familiar, confirms our pre-conceptions, or comes from people like us, we need to actively seek out and seriously consider alternative views if we want to avoid unpleasant but…

We all have things in our lives that we know we need to handle. But human nature is a funny thing and we get in our own way. All too often it’s the most obvious things that get us: the problems we ought not to be able to ignore in our health, finances, relationships or jobs. Instead, we push dealing with them off into the future. We know they’re there, right, and we’ll get around to it -but of course we don’t. I came up with the term “gray rhino” to describe obvious dangers that are coming right at us but that…

Wouldn’t it be nice if all of our problems stayed small and manageable? People who are good at identifying challenges and tending to them early on are my heroes. I think of them as game wardens caring for cute baby rhinos. We’re all different in the ways we respond to the probable but often overlooked, downplayed, or outright ignored problems that I call “gray rhinos”: they’re charging right at us, but we don’t always see them or react properly. Take the Gray Rhino Quiz to find out how well you deal with the obvious dangers in your life, work and in the…

Nearly all of us have days when we feel we’ve been run over by a rhinoceros. You know what I mean, right? Sometimes we can’t help it and there’s nothing we can do to get out of the way. But often we can manage whatever it is that’s about to flatten us like a pancake. We’re all different in the ways we respond to the probable but often overlooked, downplayed, or outright ignored problems that I call “gray rhinos”: they’re charging right at us, but we don’t always see them or react properly. The Pancake is just one personality type…

In this mini-webinar, Gray Rhino & Company Founder Michele Wucker gives you a simple but powerful tool to help you to improve the way you deal with obvious challenges that often get neglected despite -or often precisely because of- how big or likely they are.

You know the story of Chicken Little, who got hit in the head by an acorn and was sure that the sky was falling. Of course, it wasn’t. It was just an acorn. Or you may know Chicken Little as Henny Penny or Chicken Licken; there are many variations of the folk tale going back 2500 years. We’re all different in the ways we respond to the probable but often overlooked, downplayed, or outright ignored problems that I call “gray rhinos”: they’re charging right at us, but we don’t always see them or react properly. Chicken Littles are just one…