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Blue sky with lateral black swans

by Ian Hall

The snappy heading of this article could, I suppose, pass muster as a title for a work of art in the Tate Modern. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Today I want to address more serious issues and put the focus on thinking.

Not so long ago the thinking process used to be easy. “I think therefore I am,” said Descartes. Now what could be more straightforward than that! Recently, however, thinking has become big business. Apparently the world is in a state of discombobulation (a mess) because we are not thinking straight. However, some philosophical brethren would argue that our current state of economic strife has arisen precisely because we are thinking too straight. They would maintain that we are too constrained and too predictably rigid in the way we approach problems.

The solution to all our woes apparently is to adopt either a: blue sky thinking or b: lateral thinking or c: black swan thinking.

I’m not sure where the term blue sky thinking originated (the emptiness of the sky meaning starting with no preconceptions). It probably arose through some guy pushing the envelope behind the eight ball using a clean sheet of paper - but nevertheless it is a very visual description.

I suppose the best examples of blue sky thinkers are Stelios Haji- Ioannou of Easyjet and Tony Ryan of Ryanair. They each woke up one morning, saw the blue skies and developed strategies to fill them with planes. Instead, however, of the predictable Heathrow to New York or Gatwick to Los Angeles routes they came up with cheap alternatives like Newquay to Bergerac and Bournemouth to Knock. They dared to think differently and it worked. Whilst you and I are not thinking beyond the pain of getting through security for our next plane trip, they are already thinking how much they can make on the, as yet unexploited, route from Doncaster to St.Tropez. (Remember you saw it here first).

A radical approach…

Lateral thinking is a phrase coined by Edward de Bono, a prolific writer (62 books and still going strong), who champions a radical approach to the thinking process. He questions the value of the classic straitjacket thinking approach which he blames on the big three. We are not talking here about Blair, Brown and Bush, but rather Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The latter three gentlemen apparently have a lot to answer for. As for the former, there you have to make up your own mind! Mr de Bono exhorts us not to use traditional logic as the basis for our thinking as per Socrates and Co. He would prefer us to exercise reasoning that is not immediately obvious and analyse ideas that may be obtainable by using different concepts and perceptions.

Important decisions he advocates should be looked at from a number of different perspectives. A good discipline would be to move out of our habitual ways of thinking. For example,we could expand our thinking by wearing “different hats” - those representing intuition/gut reaction or creativity/free wheeling or pessimism/caution or optimism/positivity. If each decision was examined from a combination of these perspectives then we might arrive at more revolutionary thinking.

The proponent of the Black Swan approach, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, also advocates looking at situations from totally different angles. The origin and use of the term “Black Swan” is worthy of investigation.

In 17th century England there was a saying that “all swans are white”. This represented a statement of the obvious because as everyone knew there was simply no such thing as a black swan. When black swans were discovered in Australia in the 18th century, then the saying became obsolete. We are experiencing something similar today. A year ago things were “as safe as houses” or “as safe as the Bank of England”. Soon I suspect things will be “as safe as Vladimir Putin’s job” or “as safe as the Bank of Abu Dhabi”.

Black swans…

Mr Taleb’s contention is that all consequential events in history come from the unexpected. “The Black Swan”, ie the impact of the highly improbable, is hard to predict but essential to look out for and recognise. He cites examples of Black Swans as the impact of World War I, the emergence of the computer and 9/11.

His main thrust is that most human thought has focused on how to turn knowledge into decisions. He, however, turns the process on its head. He seeks to find ways to turn lack of information, lack of understanding and lack of absolute knowledge into decisions.

Between 2003-2006 he turned his attention coincidentally to the way that mankind and financial services were being conducted. In his book published some 2-3 years ago he put under the microscope “a society dependent on spurious measurements”. He was particularly scathing of “banks and their ‘scientific’ measurement of risk”.

He concluded - and remember this was long before Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers came to the fore - “the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks - when one fails they all fall.”

When he really got into stride he went on to say that “Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it’s only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self deception by burying the possibility of a large devastating loss under the rug.” Little wonder that Mr Taleb and his challenging brand of thinking are much sought after on the speakers’ circuit.

Well, there you have it. You now have a decision to make.You can base you decisions purely on a vision you may have. You can alternatively examine your thinking from every conceivable perspective. Finally, you can even turn the thinking process upside down and inside out and position yourself in direct conflict with the accepted norms and received wisdom.

One word of caution. If you go into the office and see a member of staff looking sideways out of the window and gazing dreamily at the sky, don’t accuse him/her of swanning around. He/she might just be on the verge of the most creative idea of the decade.

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