Swan Stacking:
A Call to Reframe Crisis Leadership in an Era of Unprecedented Volatility
Executive Summary
We are entering a critical inflection point in human, economic, and corporate history—an era marked by the simultaneous collision of multiple existential stressors on the American psyche and workplace. Boards of directors and corporate executives are currently navigating an invisible crisis, one that is not yet codified in strategy decks or boardroom briefs: the compounding emotional, psychological, economic, and sociopolitical toll on the American workforce.
This blog introduces the concept of “Swan Stacking”—a new framework for understanding the convergence of multiple, overlapping Black Swan and Grey Swan events. The theory argues that employees and leaders alike are experiencing layered shocks, ranging from geopolitical upheaval and policy-driven social volatility to lingering psychological trauma from the COVID-19 era and deepening distrust in systems once assumed to be safe. These compounding events are not ancillary—they are central to business risk, talent strategy, and operational resilience. And yet, too few boards and senior leaders are addressing them as such.
This blog issues a warning and a call to action: the workplace is attempting to move at the pace of productivity while its people are limping along at the pace of grief. Until that dissonance is resolved, strategy will falter—not because it is flawed, but because the vessels through which it must be delivered are cracked.
The Landscape of Swan Stacking
Historically, Black Swan events—rare, unforeseeable disruptions with massive impact—have been treated as episodic crises. But today, we are not living through a singular Black Swan. We are living through a sustained stack of them, compounded by predictable (Grey Swan) disruptions that leadership teams continue to underestimate. These include:
Geopolitical turmoil and global realignment
Policy-induced unrest, fear, and identity suppression
Increased taxation, tariff shifts, and inflationary pressures
The mental and emotional residue of the COVID-19 era
Sharp polarization in democratic institutions and public discourse
Surging turnover at the CEO and senior executive level
Erosion of psychological safety across many racial, gendered, and ideological dimensions
Employees at every level—including your C-suite—are navigating a reality that is psychologically jarring, unfamiliar, and unrelenting. They are simultaneously expected to be highly productive, future-focused, and resilient. This is not just unsustainable—it is organizationally negligent to expect otherwise without adjustment.
The Failure of Conventional Crisis Planning
Most corporate crisis strategies are designed for event-based responses—a cyber breach, a supply chain disruption, a PR incident. These plans assume the resilience of the workforce executing them. But we are now pouring detailed strategies into vessels that are fundamentally broken or depleted.
The question no one is asking enough in the boardroom is: What is the emotional capacity of our workforce to deliver on this strategy?
When leadership focuses exclusively on timelines, KPIs, and pivots, without factoring in the deep emotional weathering of its people, the result is short-lived strategy implementation followed by turnover, burnout, and strategic collapse. Businesses are beginning to see this, but few are naming it.
Five Realities Boards and Executives Must Confront
Volatility is not episodic anymore—it is structural.
Leaders must plan not around one crisis, but around prolonged turbulence.Productivity assumptions are misaligned with the emotional state of the workforce.
Traditional metrics fail to account for mental and emotional bandwidth.Employee trust in institutions—including corporate ones—is fragile.
Employees are not just working. They are wondering if they are safe, seen, and supported.The residue of the COVID era remains.
Many still live in “post-trauma mode,” with heightened anxiety, grief, and fatigue informing their decisions and interactions.The dissonance between lived experience and corporate narrative is growing.
Corporate optimism or neutrality is increasingly perceived as detachment or denial when it fails to reflect the ambient social pain many employees feel.
Strategic Recommendations for Boards and Executive Teams
1. Integrate Industrial-Organizational Psychologists as Advisors
Not to provide therapy, but to help contextualize human behavior and resilience capacity at scale.
Leverage them during strategic planning, workforce forecasting, and talent design.
2. Make Psychological Burden a Standing Risk Category
Psychological and emotional distress must be treated as an enterprise risk, not just an HR issue.
Assess organizational stamina just as rigorously as you assess financial health.
3. Pause to Assess Change Velocity
Organizations must moderate the pace of transformation, recognizing that mental bandwidth is finite.
Not all acceleration is positive. Leaders must distinguish between what is urgent and what is survivable.
4. Rebuild Organizational Safety Mechanisms
Establish spaces and cadences where employees can feel heard without reprisal.
Embed inclusive, trauma-informed leadership practices into manager training.
5. Conduct Swan Stacking Risk Scans Quarterly
Boards should repeatedly scan for emerging societal, political, and economic stressors affecting employees' ability to show up.
Understand that some swans (e.g., racial trauma, democratic destabilization) are not addressed in financial models—but are nonetheless eroding workforce cohesion and performance.
6. Address CEO and Executive Turnover as a Cultural Signal
Rising C-suite exits suggest not just market pressure, but a systemic erosion of psychological readiness at the top.
Build leadership development models that include emotional sustainability as a criterion for readiness.
Final Thought: The Human Condition Is a Business Condition
We are no longer in an era where the professional and the personal are neatly divided. Employees are not machines. They are experiencing the grief, disorientation, and fear that come with seismic societal instability—while being asked to deliver exponential growth and transformation.
Boards and executives must expand their definition of fiduciary duty to include the protection of the human engine of the business. Until we name Swan Stacking and address it with rigor, we risk organizational fragility, burnout, and a widening chasm between what we demand from our people and what they are able to give.
Check out our Published Work on Swan Stacking
Nikki Lanier