Episode 3: Lord Mervyn King: Effective Strategy for Radical Uncertainty

Successive national security and defence reviews in recent years have adjusted their language about the nature of the world, moving from being one of competition, to uncertainty, to today’s ‘radical uncertainty’. Is the concept simply being used to justify the new review and differentiate it from the last one, or does it reflect a real change in the challenges nations confront? Have we moved beyond VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), to BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible) and does it matter? And what does it mean for our approach to making strategy?

To guide us through these questions, we are joined by Baron Mervyn King of Lothbury KG. An economist by training, he graduated from both Cambridge and Harvard Universities, after time as an academic he became the Bank of England’s chief economist. Between 2003-1013, he served as its Governor, where he was responsible for the United Kingdom’s economic strategy during the 2008 global financial crisis. An accomplished academic, thinker and author, his book Radical Uncertainty with Professor John Kay considers the implications for decision making of this radical uncertainty.

John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making for an Unknowable Future, Bridge Street Press, 2020.

Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, The Decision Book: Fifty models for strategic thinking, Profile Books, 2023.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan, Penguin, 2007.

Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Random House, 2006.