Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them

This book underscores how well-wishing and positive thinking are not effective ways of handling risks of business. It's a great book to help you get past the human tendancies to think and hope and actually PLAN for the future.

The book jumps around but makes clear and valid points. A great eye opener! I would recommend this to students, leaders, informed citizens...just about anybody. I'm definitely getting more copies for friends and loved ones.

Anyone who has worked for some sort of organization, government agency, business, university or whatever, will empathise with "Predictable Surprises" by Bazerman and Watkins. This book focuses on the early and late warning signs, the cover-ups, the denials, and the eventual consequences of failing to take action to avert disaster. I've been in far too many situations where I observed that the peple "in charge" (really??) were blindsided by their own limited vision to the realities of what was happening within their organizations. There are two "Predictable Surprises" that weren't included. First, Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans. Anyone visiting that city and talking with one's professional compatriates could have seen coming what unfolded before our eyes. The warning signs and studies were out there and ignored. That's why those who had a reasonable level of education left town and paid attention to the evacuation notices. The other predictable surprise that was missed was the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. I'm Protestant but know a lot of fine Roman Catholic people. I heard things as long ago as fifty years and knew then that this situation was going to explode in the public domain. "Predictable Surprises" provides the principals that explain why this particular surprise was kept under the radar so long. An outstanding book that should be read by everyone working in the corporate world, a government agency, a university, the military, or a non-profit organization. Your life may depend on knowing what's in this book.

The authors have found a memorable phrase to describe a depressingly common phenomenon - the occurrence of a disaster or failure that has been widely and often publicly predicted. The term `predictable surprise' will undoubtedly enter the managerial and political language. They have provided a valuable analysis of why these predictable disasters occur and what can be done to prevent them (while recognizing that there are also such things as `unpredictable surprises' which can not be avoided through these processes). The book is invaluable for the clear way in which it brings the elements together and for the vividness and immediacy of the examples chosen to illustrate the points. The result is a book that is very readable as well as being immediately useful, even if many of the points have also been made elsewhere by other authors. The book provides a template against which organizations can assess their defences against `predictable surprises', and I suspect that every organization will find gaps in its armour when it measures itself against the recommendations in the book. The authors also use the book to mount a stinging attack on the failures of the American political system (and by extension those of other countries) and the need for fundamental reform. Their attack on the activities of the special interest groups and their direct responsibility for some of the worst disasters that the US has suffered is particularly pointed. One can only hope that the criticisms will be listened to and acted upon, and that politicians as well as business people will read and note them. Throughout the book, the systemic, interconnected nature of the processes that lead to predictable surprises is very clear, but the authors do not, in my opinion, highlight the fact as strongly as they should. They do point out that depletion of international fisheries is a classic case of 'the tragedy of the commons', one of several archetypal forms of systems relationship, but virtually every example that the authors cite could well be illustrated with simple systems diagrams based on one or other of the classic 'systems archetypes'. Systemic issues require systemic solutions and the leverage for systemic change may be located well beyond the area of control of the immediate actors - another fact that shows up clearly in the course of the authors' examples. It is probably no coincidence that I was strongly reminded of Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly as I read the book. The perspective and coverage is different, but the themes of willful ignorance, willful inaction and willful pursuit of perceived short-term self interest as fundamental drivers of future disasters are common to both. If Tuchman were still alive, I would have confidently expected an analysis of Iraq to follow her masterful analysis of the Vietnam war, the American War of Independence and the drivers of the Reformation. In its own way, Predictable Surprises provides a contemporary update of the way

Yes, we should have forseen 9/11, and Enron as well. This book rightfully points out that there were warning signs aplenty. But what does this really say of the future. So I first turned to Chapter 10, Future Predictable Surprises. I have to admit, I was surprised. Their entries in this category: Campaign-Finance Reform; Auditor Independence; Global Depletion of Fish Stocks; Government Subsidies, particularly in agriculture; Global Warming; Ignoring Future Financial Obligations, medicaid, medicare, social security; Frequent Flyer Miles. Yup, those are all predictable disasters. And if you brainstorm a while you can come up with a bunch of other predictable disasters: AIDS, Oil Running Out, Terriorists hitting a nuclear plant, or bombing the Old River Control Project in Louisiana, which would leave New Orleans and the hundreds of petro-chemical plants downstream high and dry, let along killing 15,000 or so people along the Atchafalaya river. Then I got to thinking a bit further. It's not the specific disasters that they want to warn us of, that's our job. Their job is to discuss how to look at disasters and what to do to protect our companies or investments (sell petrochemicals). And at this they do a good job.