When Geopolitics Becomes Unpredictable: What Growing Uncertainty Means For Workforce Strategy

Recent developments in Latin America underline how poorly many organisations are prepared for developments that expand the boundaries of what feels possible. In a world of structural unpredictability, uncertainty is now an essential dimension of workforce strategy.

The power of uncertainty

In his 2007 book Black Swan, the Lebanese-born American philosopher and risk specialist Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that societies are not undone by dramatic events as such, but by their own persistent failure to imagine them. What some of history's most dramatic and high-impact developments have in common, from the Visigoths' sack of Rome to 9/11, is that they all sat outside the mental models through which political actors and institutions assess risk, stability and continuity. The most disruptive moments, the book concludes, are those that appear implausible. At least until, suddenly, they do not.