The Impact of the Improbable

Just finished reading The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis, and found the book to be among the most fascinating of recent years.  Lewis applies his formidable analytic ability and even more formidable explanatory prowess to explicating the dynamics behind the recent worldwide economic meltdown.  Apart from compelling narrative, Lewis makes the case that the downturn resulted in large part from a failure of many parties to sufficiently allow for the occurrence of rare--but not impossible--events.

The potential for unlikely-but-possible events is something that strategy-makers everywhere should take into account. Despite evidence to the contrary, we still find most boards and administrative teams at independent and international schools assume tomorrow will be much like today.  Black swans, anyone?