Managing Uncertainty: Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Turbulent Times

Chapter 1

Introduction: managing in an uncertain world

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, 2001–06

Historians may well look back on the first years of the 21st century as a decisive moment in the human story. The different societies that make up the human family are today interconnected as never before. They face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together.

Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, 1997–2006

DONALD RUMSFELD GOT IT RIGHT. When he used the above analogy, he was speaking at a press briefing in 2002 about the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. His words were criticised at the time as an abuse of language by, among others, the Plain English Campaign. However, Geoffrey Pullum, a linguist, disagreed, saying the comment was “completely straightforward” and “impeccable, syntactically, semantically, logically and rhetorically”.

Whatever the rights and wrongs linguistically, the quotation provides a perfect starting point for this book.

We are now living in a world which combines known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and the growth of the last category ...