“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner

I love this quote, but nobody really goes out swimming far into open water without first assessing the lay of the land, or water in this case. A sort of mental, personal risk assessment, right?

In these modern and often troublesome times, it appears that while we love to devour the headlines that scream, “Stock markets lose $6 trillion”, “Five-fold increase in cyber-attacks”, or “Girl dies after eating unlabeled sandwich from high street retailer”, we do not want to actually experience such crises in our organizations, or personally for that matter.

So, when we think of risk that propels our business forward and upwards, we often think of well-timed, calculated risks, do we not? No one wants to jump into that open water without at first at least being a bit sure of what lies ahead.

But risk is dangerous, risk is fun, risk taking gives a feeling of power, like you just never know what could happen. Risks can also pay off…big time, and if you personally have nothing to lose, then why the heck not. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, isn’t that how the saying goes?

But, if you could lose your business, lose your job, lose your home, lose your reputation, lose a life, yours or anybody else’s, would you not want to check a little to make sure you were going in the right direction?

Me, personally, I have always been a little risk averse. I am an eternal optimist, but I won’t risk my life’s savings for some random business venture. What that means is that I will probably never be the next Elon Musk, and I’m okay with that, because really, when you think of it, how many Elon Musks are really out there? I mean, the ones who risk it all and become a billionaire. Most fail and not just once. I am also pretty certain that Elon Musk did not just wake up one morning and put all his money on black in the small hope that it would pay off. He did his research, he checked the lay of the land; he probably did a few risk assessments and from that, he decided that he could take the risk, and do at least okay. Did he imagine the success? Possibly but maybe not probably.

So, when it comes to looking at risks in your organization, which are the ones you will most certainly take and which will you run a mile from or simply seek to control?

Taking a chance on an unskilled junior associate is probably not going to bring your world crashing down unless you are in the business of handing over major responsibility to them, but you probably wouldn’t take on a new product or service on which to stake your reputation and finances without at least assessing what could go right or wrong with it.

So what can you do? Where do you begin?