Are Trump’s tariffs a Grey Rhino? And how can organizations prepare for such crises?

The tariffs, including a 10% baseline on all US imports and higher rates for specific countries, were foreseeable given President Trump’s longstanding protectionist stance and previous trade policies. Despite clear indicators, many businesses were unprepared for the swift implementation and broad scope of these measures. This lack of preparedness has led to significant market disruptions and economic instability.

In the world of risk and uncertainty, much attention is paid to ‘Black Swans’ – rare, non-predictable events, with high impacts. But there’s another kind of beast lurking in plain sight that deserves just as much, if not more, of our focus: the Grey Rhino.

Coined by policy analyst Michele Wucker, a Grey Rhino is a highly probable, high-impact, predictable event that we tend to neglect or underprepare for – not because we don’t see it coming, but because we ignore or discount it. It’s the financial crisis we knew was coming, the pandemic we warned about for years, the climate risks that are increasingly measurable. These events are not random shocks – they are looming threats that we fail to act on until it’s too late.

Is the current wave of disruption caused by the imposition of tariffs on countries around the world by President Trump a Grey Rhino? The tariffs were definitely foreseeable given President Trump’s longstanding protectionist stance, his previous trade policies, and his consistent statements made during his election campaign. Trump has simply followed through on his electoral commitments. Despite these clear indicators, many businesses were unprepared for the swift implementation and broad scope of these measures. This is prime Grey Rhino territory.

Why we ignore Grey Rhinos

So why do we ignore Grey Rhinos? And how can your organization become better at spotting and preparing for them?

Humans are wired to avoid discomfort, and confronting an obvious threat means making hard decisions – often early, before others do. In business, this can mean rethinking a profitable model, investing in resilience strategies, or speaking up against a trend when everyone else seems to be riding it.

Add to that a tendency toward short-termism (quarterly earnings, annual reviews, etc.) and a ‘wait and see’ culture, and a Grey Rhino can trample over an organization that was too slow or too rigid to move.

How to prepare your organization for Grey Rhinos

To survive and thrive in a world of visible-yet-ignored threats, your organization needs to build adaptive resilience. This involves:

Building a culture of awareness
Encourage teams to speak up about emerging risks, even if they seem obvious or uncomfortable. Use scenario planning and ‘pre-mortems’ to identify risks not just from outside forces, but from internal decisions, dependencies, or blind spots. Ask, “What’s the one thing we’re all pretending won’t happen?”

Strengthen strategic agility
Being aware isn’t enough – you need the ability to pivot quickly. That means simplifying decision-making processes, empowering cross-functional teams, and reducing red tape that slows down responses in a crisis. Ask:

Are your leaders able and empowered to act rapidly to make big decisions about organizational direction and structure?
Do you test and exercise your ability to adapt?

Diversify your risk exposure
Don’t put all your bets on one region or limited revenue streams and product lines. Don’t be reliant on third party providers. Diversity builds resilience. The businesses that survived COVID-19 often had flexible business models that could be reshaped quickly.

Invest in operational flexibility
Whether it’s remote work infrastructure, supply chain redundancy, or modular systems, flexible infrastructure enables faster responses. Consider investing not just for growth, but for optionality – the ability to adapt to more than one potential future.

Look beyond the quarterly horizon
Short-term wins can blind you to long-term dangers. Develop key performance indicators that measure resilience – not just profitability. Reward teams for reducing vulnerabilities, not just maximizing returns.

You can’t prevent all Grey Rhinos, but you can stop them from trampling your organization. The organizations that succeed in uncertain times aren’t those that predict the future with perfect accuracy – but those that build the capacity to rapidly adapt when, not if, the unexpected strikes.

Developing adaptive resilience is completely in alignment with international resilience standards. ISO 22336: 2024 ‘Organizational resilience – Guidelines for resilience policy and strategy’ highlights two key areas that organizations need to have in place in a resilience strategy: the ability to effectively manage risk and the ability to adapt to change. The standard goes on to explain that ‘the organization should demonstrate its adaptability’ by:

Accepting uncertainty and change, ability to change, evolve, and adapt in response to changing circumstances and to apply existing resources to new purpose;
Having processes to promote the evolution of the organization by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of activities rather than seeking solutions based on the status quo;
Designing adaptability and flexibility into the organization’s systems so it can evolve and manoeuvre quickly, understand and adapt to the rapid pace of change and be fit for the future with the agility to make decisions quickly, manage risks, minimize potential threats and capitalize on opportunities.

It’s too late to prepare for the current Grey Rhino, but what other Grey Rhinos are heading your way – and what’s stopping you from starting to prepare for them? Can you flex and adapt in a storm? Or will you stand inflexible and rigid until everything comes crashing down?