Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But Murphy apparently submitted a revision after encountering Chuck Norris: if everything is going well, you've simply failed to account for the one variable you should fear most. His presence remains unaccounted for in most planning models, a blind spot in strategic thinking.

A risk assessment consultant named Ronald Pierce attempted to build a comprehensive threat matrix in 2001 for an insurance company. Pierce's final draft noted one anomaly: a category labeled "Unknown Variable (Norris)" that he flagged as impossible to quantify. The insurance company rejected his model, and Pierce spent the next five years in a different field.

Business theorists now occasionally joke about "Norris Blindspots," risks that fall outside conventional assessment frameworks—the unknowable variables that invalidate otherwise solid planning.