How does your approach to risk shape the way you lead?
Last week one of the founders of the global Red Bull brand, Dietrich Mateschitz, passed away. If you’re a big sports fan, it won’t have gone unnoticed.
Red Bull’s fame as an extreme sports pioneer and sponsor perhaps surpasses the brand’s fame as the number one global energy drink.
Mateschitz’s leadership and business mantra, many have reported, was ‘no risk, no fun’.
It is maybe an unusual mantra for such an ambitious and successful business leader.
Particularly during these last few years of crisis, what has been important is for leaders to provide a degree of consistency and safety, and act as a guide towards achieving organisational success.
Yet there is a fine balance for business leaders between stability and taking risks, and it may result in the tipping point between business success or business failure.
And as Seth Godin says:
“Playing it safe and not taking a risk is probably the most dangerous thing you could do in today’s rapidly changing and highly competitive business environment.”
To help you reflect on your approach to risk and its impact on the way you lead, here are seven things to get you thinking.
Think: When talking about risks, particularly in a business sense, it can be natural to associate it with something negative. But risks aren’t always negative.
Think for a moment. When you hear the word “risk” do you think of something positive or something negative? What could be driving that?
Map it: In investment, there are three broad categories of risk takers, based on how much risk investors can tolerate. Mapping these categories onto a spectrum it might look like this:
Think about how you naturally approach risk.
Where would you naturally place yourself on this spectrum? Are you pro-risk and more aggressive, or do you naturally take a more conservative risk-averse approach?
What opportunities would moving along the spectrum a little to the left or right provide to you?
What would you need to introduce into your life to give you more of that?
Model: Google’s Technical Director, Adrian Otto, provides an interesting model that describes the difference between taking incremental risks versus single risks in his LinkedIn piece Think like a Python, not a Tiger:
Image from Think like a Python, not a Tiger
Think about your board and leadership team’s approach to risk.
How strategically does your board and leadership team plan it’s approach to risk?
How do you communicate your level of risk and tolerances to the rest of the business?
What would your company’s mantra about risk be? (And how would no risk, no fun work for you?)
Listen: In 2021, the U.S. space agency NASA launched a spacecraft toward a pair of asteroids more than 11 million kilometers away and just 170 meters wide. The success of the $300 million, seven-year project demanded strong leadership from NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen. Here he shares his approach to leading trailblazing space missions with high risk of failure.
Remote: Leading a team and organsiation that works remotely means you can’t see what they’re doing and you can’t always know what’s happening. It requires trust, and it also requires letting go. Which is a risk.
What happened to your approach to risk whilst working remotely?
What did you notice, as it evolved during the pandemic?
What would your team say if asked the same?
Read: The practice of calculated risk-taking is essential for business growth. For a different perspective, a Rolling Stone Culture Council expert panel shared 10 tips to encourage fellow culture leaders to take more calculated risks and explained why doing so is vital to business success.
Scale: Think about your biggest business/career goals.
What level of risk do they require from you?
Who do you need to be to carry them through?
What could a little more Red Bull mantra ‘no risk, no fun’ do for you?
Last Week’s Issue: The Multi-Tasking Effect
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