Sitemap

Member-only story

The biggest risk is the opportunity you never saw.

5 min readAug 1, 2025
Press enter or click to view image in full size
Credit: AndreyPopov

Control is an illusion.

As I type these words, one of the largest earthquakes ever is making waves (literally) east of Russia, causing Tsunami warnings in Russia, Japan, and the United States. Millions of people are being evacuated. By the time you read this, we will know the impact.

Earthquakes have been part of our lives for as long as we have lived, and they will be, although one never knows what we will invent. It’s not that we don’t know if an earthquake will happen; what matters is that we don’t know when.

The timing of an earthquake and the potentially life-threatening tsunami are unpredictable.

I had never heard of a Tsunami until the deadly Christmas Tsunami in Thailand in 2004. I remember waking up and seeing the devastation and despair that huge waves had caused. Thousands of people did not survive the power of water that day.

Since then, we’ve learned from earthquakes in the oceans. We now know that huge waves will come to shore within a few hours of an earthquake, creating havoc. We know how to react.

We can’t predict the exact timing of earthquakes, but we can expect them to happen, and we know that when they occur underwater, they create tsunamis.

--

--

Erikjan Lantink
Erikjan Lantink

Written by Erikjan Lantink

Business & Leadership coach. Interim Leader. Writer. Speaker. Former Retail Executive (general management; operations; HR)