Trends. Analysis. Insight. Data. Focus Group. Hypothesis.
A tag cloud in my world of strategic planning will reveal something quite improbable. Something Nassim Nicholas Taleb has coined as the Black Swan. Much ado about nothing! What if I were to tell you that everything you do is utterly useless, meaningless, bulls**t! Seriously! How would I make you feel? That’s how NNT has made me feel right about now! Quite improbable but true!
What is so Black Swan about my world? The simple fact that everything we do as planners to simplify or to put it more aptly platonify is not as meaningful or even accurate as I once believed it was. We get it wrong at so many levels. A lot of what I do simply put is baloney (or faluda from where I come from)!
So what am I going to do? I could choose to be the ostrich or I could choose to be the Black Swan! The highly improbable planner who fails even harder trying to change the game! The probable outcome but this is what I will do. Will you do the same?
Prediction is not possible. Deal with it. Those hypothesis we try to confirm. Seek to be proven wrong! Fight the confirmation error. Yes my sole motto from now would be to proven wrong. I want to be told I was wrong the next time I do research. Try not to make sense of things! OMG! How am I going to do without that. We go through so much research and have to “craft” that illusive insight – Narrative Fallacy (or Fraud to put it bluntly). The best in my world are the ones with a point of view and creating a story around it is the art that sticks! Is there a better way! Not quite sure yet. The things we don’t hear, don’t find out about in a research – the problem of silent evidence. Basing our strategies on the little evidence we get is what we do! This is not getting any better is it! A whole of lot of modeling, mapping, scenario planning is ludic fallacy at play. It all looks hunky dory on paper but it is far from what goes on in the real world or so says NNT?
Skeptical. That is the point. NNT would be proud. But don’t just stop there. Be empirically skeptic. That’s what he is. That’s not what I am though nor will be anytime soon. I may not have the luxury to empirically prove my point of view. But I do know what I need to do and I am not quite ready to tell you! Yet 😉