You called it, didn’t you?
Let’s talk about “gray rhinos” today
Today, write about a “gray rhino.”
In her fascinating 2016 book, “The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore,” Michele Wucker defined a gray rhino as a “highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat: kin to both the elephant in the room and the improbable and unforeseeable black swan.”
“Gray rhinos are not random surprises, but occur after a series of warnings and visible evidence. The bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, the new digital technologies that upended the media world, the fall of the Soviet Union...all were evident well in advance,” the book notes.
The truth is, plenty of people take precautions against all kinds of threats, big and small, every single day. And plenty also do not for fear of appearing to overreact. Today, write about a grey rhino you either see coming or that you knew would arrive and saw it do so. It can be absolutely anything on any scale, but be sure to include details like what made/makes you recognize it, as a threat, why others may not act on it or recognize it, what one might do about it, and how to prevent it from happening again. Let’s write.
