How big are your business balls?
I hope the picture for this blog brought a smile to your face… I thoroughly enjoyed the photo-shoot, although my ops and marketing directors nearly didn’t let me – so I’m glad I sneaked it past them!
We are going to talk about risk today, there’s this myth amongst entrepreneur’s and business owners that we are all massive gamblers and risk takers because you have to be. Interestingly over the years I have found this not to be the case.
Don’t get me wrong, in my 20’s I was a risk taker, especially in my early businesses I was much more of a gambler in business. Now, from what I see in business, we entrepreneurs are risk mitigators, that’s what we do.
However there are two extremes:-
1) One extreme are The Gamblers, the roll of the dice people. I was once told a great a great story by a friend of mine who was 5th generation aristocracy. His grandma lost a lot of fortune on betting on flies on the wall – she would literally bet on whether they would take off or stay on the wall! She lost thousands and this was back in the early 1990s!
Although, it’s a lot better odds than a lot of business people are taking, as at least you have a 50/50 chance a fly is going to take off!
2) On the other side you have Extreme Perfectionism. Every ‘T’ has to be crossed every ‘I’ dotted before you move on.
Neither work alone – there is a spectrum; the question is where should we sit? I believe there is a grey area in the middle where we should sit. We should class ourselves as risk mitigators and that’s the point of strategy to mitigate risk.
Lots of people look at me and my adventures and think I’m a massive risk taker – this couldn’t be further than the truth, it’s about risk mitigating. When I investigated climbing Denali I found out that Insurers won’t cover you to go up the mountain and you have to get special cover. When you find out you have to get specialist cover you know you are taking a risk. There are other areas you look into the seasons, the kit you will need, etc. to mitigate the risk. There is a higher risk of having a car accident than an accident when mountaineering but only if you mitigate the risk.
When up a mountain, like business, choose life! Don’t take risks and gamble your whole company on things.
Risk is never predictable, you can mitigate as much as you can but sometimes you have to do something.
In 2008 I faced the perfect storm in business- if you remember at this time there was the property market collapse. We managed to predict this would happen and stepped in afterwards (with the perfect strategy and timing). Looking back the risk was mitigated brilliantly, the banks backed us and people thought we were clever as we predicted the collapse. BUT, even then risk wasn’t perfect, what we didn’t predict were the banks collapsing.
Strategy is never perfect, risk is never perfect.
It was a bad time, the banks when down and I went bankrupt.
Looking back would I do the same again – yes!
The reason is, is that the information I had at time was correct and told us to make that call, the only thing we couldn’t predict was the banks collapsing. The only perfect science is hindsight, sometimes you have to learn from mistakes and move forwards.
There is always something we can’t see, we can’t predict the future perfectly and we have to make a call.
Sometimes the biggest risk is not taking a risk and not doing anything – regret. When I go out on the final whistle I would much rather live with failure than regret,
10 years ago we lost my father unexpectedly – it was very hard. The really sad thing was the regret that went with it -he died with his dreams intact. He failed early in life and he never came back from it. I don’t want to do this, and I encourage you not to do the same.
You’ll make some failures along the way, I’ve made loads. Understand that ‘how big are your business balls’ is about mitigating the risk as much as possible. Be careful and make sure it doesn’t sink you. If you are going to take a risk and the worst that will happen is you will fail and you can move on -fine, if it will kill you and your business – no, think very carefully.
What does risk mean to you, where are you on the spectrum? Rolling dice on flies on the wall or doing nothing?
BGI Strategy on Page helps you mitigate that risk, plan, give you clarity and certainty.
We’ve created some great free training resources on this, so sign up and come and join the revolution in strategic planning.
Yes, the picture made me smile!