Black Swan Thinking
Many years ago, I worked a shift at dayjob where shit well-and-truly hit the fan. We were preparing for one of our busiest periods of the year–lots of incoming calls from lots of panicked writers looking to double-check a big opportunity™ deadline, while simultaneously trying to prep for other big projects that were coming up. Big opportunity™ deadline days weren’t fun days at the best of time, but within the first hour of this one kicking off shit started going wrong. One staff member’s flight home had been delayed by twenty-four hours. Another staff member called in sick (from memory, they were heading to hospital). Our then-CEO was incomunicado for the day (for reasons I don’t recall), and the two other staff members on deck were both relatively new to the organisation. On top of that, i was relatively new to the role I was working and the projects I was working on. It was a time of transition, new