What is a Black Swan Event?

Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable, defines a Black Swan event:

"I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of black swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives. Ever since we left the Pleistocene, some ten million years ago, the effect of these Black Swans has been increasing. It started accelerating during the industrial revolution, as the world started getting more complicated, while ordinary events, the ones we study and discuss and try to predict from reading the newspapers, have increasingly become inconsequential."

Crisis Management: Leader & Strategy

Let's start with the very concept of "crisis management." If that's what you're planning, and many companies will do just that, you're already behind the momentum and fallout of the crisis being "managed." All you'll be able to manage is watching the event spin out of your control.

In the case that you're not prepared for a crisis (and that's most companies and private and government sector organizations), what you really want is a firm that can provide, immediate, thoughtful, experienced, and logical crisis leadership. The process begins by providing your organization with professional crisis leadership that is predictive, innovative, experienced and pro-active. Equally important is that crisis leadership does not begin when a crisis occurs. The engagement begins before then: so that Maverick can assess your current readiness, identify weaknesses and strengths, and appropriately train those who will be on the front lines of any future crisis. And, it includes making sure that your people understand their role in a crisis, and where their guidance will come from when, not if, a crisis eventually occurs.

As Dr. Marty Cohen says, "When feelings go up, thinking goes down." When it's your crisis, your feelings and emotions are likely going to interfere with rational decision making. You need outside resources to lead your people and your company out of the crisis as quickly as events and circumstances allow. At the same time, your senior people and crisis leadership team are all required to present a calming and highly visible internal and public face that conveys to one and all that as bad as the event that occurred may be, there is a responsive leadership in place that is highly communicative, knowledgeable and capable. Maverick will provide you with the ability to respond exactly as you need to: to calm your customers, stakeholders, employees and the market (if you're a public company).

Once you recognize the need to have a crisis leadership firm available when it's needed most, consider this: who are the people that are going to presumably provide that much needed training in advance of a crisis, and provide and assist with your own and the company's leadership at the most difficult time in its history?

At Maverick, your crisis leadership team is led by two practice directors: Dr. Martin D. Cohen, a licensed, clinical psychologist and Dr. Michael Weeks. Dr. Cohen is credited with creating and implementing the first psychological trauma response teams for first responders and victims in the country. His model has been copied throughout the U.S. Recently, Dr. Cohen was invited to share his knowledge of providing psychological trauma response teams to the Chinese government. Dr. Weeks (his doctorate was earned at Oxford University) is a retired Air Force pilot who retired at the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In addition to his role at Maverick Dr. Weeks is a tenured professor of business at the University of Tampa.

Providing scenarios and simulation supporting Drs. Cohen and Weeks is Charles Beck, Jr., a former career officer from the covert directorate of the CIA, and Bill Stark, who founded the first privately held counter terrorism and risk assessment firm staffed entirely by former career officers from the CIA and other federal agencies (and was recruited by Mr. Beck in the late 1970's). Creating remote but plausible crisis scenarios requires significant experience and operations expertise in the clandestine world-and Maverick brings an abundance of that to the table, in addition to military and psychological insights. We don't believe you'll find another firm with Maverick's depth and breadth of knowledge and operational experience in this area of crisis leadership and strategy.

Black Swan is that part of the Maverick's Crisis Leadership practice that deals with, and we quote Donald Rumsfeld, "the unknown unknowns." We can't predict Black Swan events-no one can, but within our experience is the ability to conceive and recognize potential events that may not be recognized internally by your organization's risk management, HR or senior level management groups. The crisis scenarios created by our Black Swan group, while highly improbable, are possible. Maverick can create and lead real-time simulations that will test every aspect of your organization's crisis response and readiness capability. Maverick can run these simulations prior to preparing and training your people for such events-or after it has already assessed and trained your people. The simulation will be as real as is possible-without causing a "War of the Worlds" scenario. Remember what you learned long ago? "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best?" Well, the best is not generally what you get. But Maverick will prepare you and your people for the worst, which will enable them to respond better to future crises that may not rise to Black Swan Events.