Storytelling as a risk mitigation strategy
Or how improve resilience while avoinding cognitive traps
Uncertainty
I have always been deeply bothered by how hazards sometimes develop into accidents (or not) and how we perceive risks in general.
The uncertainty that potential risks bring about is part of our daily lives and decision-making process. Since the dawn of time, many of our most important human endeavours throughout history have been directed towards mitigating that risk.
Take, for instance, cave paintings.
Recent and brilliant research (Bacon, 2023) points to some types of dot marks (line, dot, and “Y” signs) attached to images of different animal species that worked as symbols. These would have been the first information recording system that we have traces of, dating back thousands of years to the Palaeolithic era. It is believed to have been a sort of lunar calendar to keep a record of pregnancy times and prey availability, thus in essence, an early attempt to reduce uncertainty.
Other important social constructs of old directly related to the control of uncertainty are future guessing and all the praying to gods by divine experts to convince them to favour human endeavours, again, an attempt to gain some grip on the future.
So, we’ve always been dealing in the present with future risks or opportunities that could, or could not come true.
We have then developed as species this rare ability to think beforehand about something not there yet, an image, a likely set of outcomes, and assess the odds of having success or failure.
And a required tool for carrying out the “risk management” of those imagined futures involves risk mitigation methods, such as sacrifices, prayers, and votive offerings to saviour Gods, among others.
These methods were handy indeed, if not always with the Gods themselves, at least they helped a lot with our peace of mind.
Because psychologically, humans need to diminish anxiety and stress that come alongside uncertainty.
Today, animal sacrifices are not currently very useful in the marketplace, so we rely on other less bloody methods for risk mitigation strategies, which at a corporate level usually involve, among others:
- Acceptance (conduct the enterprise and assume the attached risk)
- Avoidance (avoiding the event from occurring altogether)
- Reduction (take measures to reduce the likelihood or impact should it occur).
- Transfer (using an insurance policy to transfer the risk to a third party)
And they all work, quite decently, to a certain extent.
Risk Blindness
However, one of the biggest challenges in risk management is closing the gap between corporate risk assessment and personal or societal risk assessment and awareness, as our inner wirings push us, individuals, to pick the most effective mitigation strategy to date, by far: risk blindness.
I am to this very day perplexed by how we are all wired to “not see” hazards depending on what our focus or interest is, at a particular point in time.
Following the above, one is tempted to think that when in the past we killed a goat to mitigate uncertainty it was psychologically sounder than not prepping at all but rather going to war hoping that everything should go as expected.
It’s commonplace that this ability to not see some perils in certain situations is probably adaptative. In the sense that we’ve developed it to protect ourselves from feeling too much anxiety and be able to act, regardless of what the odds are.
That’s probably also the reason why all the insureds used to say: “it was unexpected. No one could have predicted it”, every time I visited some house or industry as Loss Adjuster after a fire or another destructive incident had happened.
My father was also Loss Adjuster. And when I was young, I remember us talking around the table about incidents, insurance, and accountabilities and who should be liable in case of an accident, and why.
So, for someone who grew up being aware of things that can go wrong, and working with such things on a daily basis, one would guess that by the time I grew older, I must have been used to risks and able to endure those situations personally.
To my dismay, I discovered it was not the case.
We’re all too human and subjected to feeling emotions that can hinder our rational brains. Me, you, everybody alike.
For instance, when I went through a car crash in 2014, even if luckily not very serious, I got injured in my back and felt overwhelmed for a while, unable to think clearly until late afterwards.
And the same happened again during the first days of the Pandemic, while the lockdown found the three of us at home, me, my wife and my 4-year-old son, both of them sick with COVID in bed.
Even though better prepared to understand the situation rationally. I was not able to keep my emotions in check, and I finally freaked out. I counted every day thinking that I was going to get sick the day after. And my anxiety skyrocketed to the moon.
So, it’s important to recognize that everyone is human and can be affected by emotions and anxiety, but there are ways to confront and assess risks.
One way, as I learned then, is to be aware of one's emotional responses to a difficult situation and to take steps to manage them.
But what helped us in those days was storytelling.
Every night before going to bed, I began to tell my son a tale. We titled them later The Lockdown Tales. I made the whole story up on the go, by using some already well-known characters that Lucas, my son, found exciting: Simbad the sailor, Finia the mermaid, the Megalodon...
And miraculously the tales worked on him as an enchantment. Magically he was happy again and engaged with the stories (and Dad). And, what was even more surprising for me, it allowed me to, little by little, regain my centre and calm down.
So, getting back to our risk awareness business: what can be done to confront and assess risks if even the most prepared can feel distressed or anxious?
Because we, as a society, must find a way to do it better.
In 2023, and this new world, hazards of all kinds have become (almost) existential risks, given the interconnectedness and vulnerability of technology that we all depend upon.
In palaeolithic times if the shaman assessed the odds wrongly or his mitigation strategy of choice was to dismiss some hazard that finally came true, the worst that could happen was someone injured or, maybe, one tribe going bust.
Compared to the Palaeolithic, the potential consequences of a wrong decision or a wrong mitigation strategy are nowadays much more severe. A bad decision made by a politician, government, or country can potentially affect a whole city, country, the whole continent, or even human civilisation as we know it.
It is then of utmost importance for society, and for us as individuals, to take a proactive approach to risk management, awareness, and mitigation, rather than a reactive one.
This requires a continuous process of risk assessment and effective communication.
So, apart from providing support and resources for individuals and communities who could be affected by risks, what else?
What can be done to increase risk awareness in society without people freaking out in the process, or otherwise dismissing risks altogether to avoid reflecting on them?
We know, that the learning process can be sometimes overwhelming, destabilizing, and cumbersome. However, something that we know with certainty about the human psyche (and I experienced personally during the Pandemic) is that we LOVE stories.
Storytelling
We need narratives, for our brains to function correctly.
We’re animals that continuously make sense of reality and ourselves by telling stories to others and, of course, ourselves too. If there is none available, we make up one on the go. And we also learn primarily by emotions, not just by using our rational brains.
So, we need stories to make sense of everything.
If the story is captivating enough and draws on certain characters that we all, somehow, can feel connected to (we call them archetypes), it’ll be even more compelling. I’ll drive the point home. And it’ll serve the purpose of communicating effectively.
This is my thesis, which we can all get to explore together if you like: storytelling is the tool of choice, the best suited, to unlock our children’s future, by feeding our and their brains with useful information on natural and man-made hazards to increase societal risks awareness in the process, while enjoying a good engaging story.
Take care, and stay thoughtful!
An excellent reflection. The power of stories will never go out of style. They can always help us to improve. And be better people, no matter what age or condition.