Should I Do It? Should I?
I don't know if you all enjoy the "Xtreme" sports, but there's one thing you should really check out. One of the better skaters (people who ride skateboards and are either 1. insanely courageous or 2. simply insane) had a gigantic version of a half pipe made. The drop into this thing gets them up to about 30 miles an hour, then they go up the other half that shoots them approximately 8,000 miles straight up into the air. And then, AND THEN, they have to come back down and try to land. That would scare the living daylights out of this copywriter. Most of the guys I saw attempt this small task got in the air, looked down, and basically tried to figure out how to crash land without dying. But one guy, not only did he land, he did a freaking front-flip in the air. When one skater was asked, "When you go that high, doesn't it scare you?" To which he replied, "I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life." The next question was, "So why even try it?" Answer, "Because when I land it is going to feel better than anything I've ever experienced." Athletes, especially Xtreme athletes, are a rare breed, but there is something that managers across the land could learn from the risk analysis that these athletes use on a regular basis.
Methinks Mr. David Apgar, who wrote Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don't Know, would agree. He thinks that "too many managers think risk management is strictly for technical specialists. Skateboarders don't consult physicists and medical doctors before they attempt a trick, they see a situation, decide whether they will die or not, and if they think not, they go for it because they know that succeeding will not only "feel great", it will get them noticed - which in an endorsement-centric sport is vital - and ultimately advance their careers. This is the type of decision making that managers tend to lack.
Apgar breaks out a four step process for managers to follow in order to improve their "Risk Intelligence." 1) Recognize which risks are learnable and reduce their uncertainty by discovering more about them; 2) Identify risks you can learn about the fastest. The higher your learning speed, the more the project is worth pursuing; 3) Take on risky projects one at a time -- learning about the risks underlying each before moving to the next; and 4) Build networks of business partners, suppliers and customers who can collectively manage new ventures' risks by playing distinct roles.
Basically Mr. David has taken a very difficult process - one that managers are always struggling with in both execution and convincing a higher-up of that risks value - and made it very straight forward. It's not good enough to rely on the technical specialist. If you as manager understands this process, and uses it as it is intended, then you can work TOGETHER with the specialist to execute high risk/high reward projects. Unless you simply want to allow for fall guy if the risk goes array, you should really implement this risk analysis process into not only your managerial life, but perhaps your life in general....and I think our new lord Dr. Phil McGraw would agree.
And if giving you a distinct and manageable process wasn't enough, Risk Intelligence also includes two valuable tools for improving your Risk IQ: the Risk Intelligence Audit and the Risk Scorecard -- and after these tools, the book concludes with a 10-step action plan for systematically raising your managerial and organizational scorecard. Jeesh, that's a lot of helpful stuff.
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