If you insist on using other people’s metaphors, you help your own credibility by applying them correctly to events. Better still, create your own metaphors.

Three recent cases, insurance entrepreneur, Stephen Catlin, journalist Gavin Davis and Oliver Wyman partners, Tony Hayes, Russell Jones and Joshua Gilbert, who insist on referring to Covid-19 as a “black swan” event. The creator of the metaphor, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, has told everyone, who follows his work that this is a “white swan” event.

My point is not to “pick up” individuals but success. Learning the right lessons from this pandemic and changing future behaviour requires that we fully grasp the issue at hand, not mis-represent it.

Taleb’s foresight and wisdom, as set out in his co-authored October 2009 Harvard Business Review article, http://The Six Mistakes Executives Make in Risk Management is as essential reading now, as it was 11 years ago.