Understanding Risk is a Secret to Success

Risk is uncertainty that matters. To prevent this, we try to control, mitigate, standardise and manage people and processes.

This principle was revealed to me years ago when I hosted a speaker at the South African Reserve Bank. He was an expert in risk, there to do a lunchtime presentation. What I learned that day has stayed with me over the many years since.

It ultimately boils down to is that risk is uncertainty that matters. There is one such kind of uncertainty with which we are all familiar – the risk that bad things will happen.

A different perspective

However, there is a whole additional type of risk. It’s as real as the first kind, but it is hardly ever considered in how we approach life and leadership and the uncertainties surrounding us. It’s the risk that good things will not happen.

If you think that this is just semantics, you’ve probably not fully grasped the implications of the point and what it opens up for all of us in terms of possibilities.

How different might the world be if we spent the same amount of energy working to make possible the good, rather than only to prevent the bad? What if we focus on the goals we want to achieve – with and through others – rather than on the adverse outcomes we want to avoid?