Predictable Surprises

Defined as “a predictable surprise as an event or set of events that take an individual or group by surprise, despite prior awareness of all the information necessary to anticipate the events and their consequences...” by the authors Max Bazerman and Michael Watkins, the book Predictable Surprises sheds light on the question that surrounds many events in our live; the question of “could we have prevented this from happening?” In three parts, the book goes over how we can go through the motions of predicting the future of these surprises and how we can learn to prevent them. The main point that is gone over in the book is the fact that many of the situations that we encounter in our lives have factors, or signs, which show us before time …show more content…
In Predictable Surprises the quote “Even the most generous and future-thinking group will accept responsibility only for the damage that the group itself has caused. Unfortunately, we are rarely able of making objective assessments of such matters.”, give us an insight of what we are willing to accept and do with the knowledge that we have. This is a general habit that we have as human beings, for much of the population is not willing to accept the blame for something that they do not believe that they have caused personally. This is where the three different types of bias come into play. For the majority of situations, the human bias is the blame for us not wanting to plan for the future. These concepts are things that allow us to believe that there is no problem and it will get better in the future. We are egocentric people that only want to do things that would benefit us and if they do not, we tend to care about the outcomes that would not help us in the slightest bit , so whether they would actually help the overall cause we are doing and not really help us personally, we would rather see the whole cause fail and then say that we were not aware of the situations or were merely trying to keep the status quo by not trying to change anything for the benefit of the overall situation. However, we cannot say that everything we choose to overlook is purely based off of our own wants and …show more content…
The RPM system is the method that is offered in the book as a method of trying to prevent these things from happening. The recognition step is the first step in the prevention of a predictable surprise. Organizations have to recognize that there are various outcomes to the situations and they have to be prepared for any of the outcomes coming true. After the threat that was being made has been recognized, the next step would be the prioritization of the threat. For the situation we have to analyze if there is a worse situation that could happen or whether there is something else that could be done. From this, the different things that could happen would be taken and then be used to redesign the whole course of the situation. Once the situation is redesigned, the next step is mobilization. All that is done in this step is just being prepared for whatever might happen and be ready to deal with the problem. The main point that is brought across the book is that being able to predict a surprise from happening can be done; it is not always something that will always be super predictable. We are not sure of what could happen in the future, but we have to be prepared for whatever situation might come our