Book Titles

Although there’s very little danger that a forecaster will ignore the inside view, overlooking the outside view is routine. That’s a fatal error.

Many small probabilities added together equal a large probability that at least some of those nasty surprises will actually come to pass.

…things almost never go according to plan. On big projects, they don’t even come close.

…no matter how many risks you can identify, there are always many more that you can’t. They are the ‘unknown unknowns’…

Old project data are seldom considered a valuable resource and collected…planners and managers have a mindset that is focused on the future, not the past.

…you should err on the side of caution and assume that your project is part of a fat-tailed distribution, because this is more likely to be the case than not.

Exhaustive planning that enables swift delivery, narrowing the time window that black swans can crash through, is an effective means of mitigating this risk.

…projects seldom nosedive for a single reason.

Notice that risk mitigation does not require predicting the exact circumstances that lead to disaster.

In this complex world, we can and must move the probabilities in our favor, but we can never achieve certainty.