Here is a brief excerpt from an article written for the McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Company. In it, Michael G. Jacobides shares his thoughts about gray rhinos, “the real danger.” To read the complete article, check out other resources, learn more about the firm, obtain subscription information, and register to receive email alerts, please click here.

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In his famous book, Nassim Taleb admonished us to beware of “black swans,” disasters so rare that managers disregard them and academic models exclude them—and for which we’re therefore not prepared.

Personally, I think this concern is overdone. The real danger is “gray rhinos”: while hard to miss in the zoo, they are surprisingly difficult to spot in the South African bush, obscured as they are by the vegetation. By the time they’re visible, they are already storming toward you, leaving little chance to react. As academics, our job is to help managers tune into the rustling leaves or cracking twigs of an approaching challenge—or opportunity—before it’s upon them. To do that, we must focus on the parts of the environment that matter most and make sure the tools we carry are fit for the purpose.

A recent roundtable discussion involving leading-edge thinkers and practitioners from business schools, corporate-strategy departments, and McKinsey vividly illustrated both the promise and the challenge of turning academic research into actionable insights. Academics are often criticized—fairly, on the whole—for working in ivory towers far removed from the needs of real-world executives on the ground. In my view, we can do a great deal more to realize “gains from trade” between our two worlds, and in this article I set out four areas where that can happen.

[Here is the first area on which to focus.]

How being rigorous helps improve decisions

First and foremost, we need rigor. But there are different types of rigor: the rigor of abstract analytical models, and behavioral rigor, which looks at how individuals, groups, and institutions actually behave. So far, we’ve expected too much from research that might be analytically rigorous but still doesn’t describe reality accurately. I’m thinking particularly of work that comes out of economics, such as game theory or financial economics, which can help but also can obfuscate.

When we confuse beautiful models with messy reality, we all suffer. In the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008, for example, many policy makers deluded themselves into thinking that markets could regulate themselves, while regulators remained blissfully unaware of the business models and structures that had developed in the financial sector. Academics and their models share the blame for these oversights.3

Behavioral work, though, is far more promising. We’re learning more and more about behavioral biases and the way individuals really make decisions. Now we need behavioral and evolutionary economics to step up and show us how organizations make decisions—and why we can expect them, quite predictably, to make bad decisions and to stick with the wrong behavior. The more we know about organizational pathologies, the better the outcomes we can achieve.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Michael G. Jacobides holds the Sir Donald Gordon Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at London Business School.