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

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: BookSHELF - Book Review

Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming and How to Prevent Them. By Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins. Harvard Business School Press, 317 pages. $27.50.

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A "predictable surprise," of course, is an oxymoron, but it makes for a catchy title--and in the case of this book, an interesting and nicely conceived rumination on how leaders in business and government might do a better job of avoiding calamities that they should at least have had a good inkling of.

Not surprisingly, the first chapter tackles two of the biggest shocks of the past few years--the 9/11 attacks and the collapse of Enron Corp. But the authors argue that rather than focus on ad hoc, after-the-fact analysis, leaders need to develop broad-based pre-emptive strategies to prevent such calamities. "Organizations will achieve the greatest success if they adopt blanket measures to prepare for a spectrum of disasters, rather than addressing potential surprises one at a time," write Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Watkins...