![\"Edison](\"https:\/\/svapm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/lightbulb-200x300.png\")
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I’m sure you’ve\u00a0all heard that old saying, “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” That adage applies just as well to project managers where ‘bold’ equals ‘risk-taking’.\u00a0 I’m also sure you’ve all attended at least one management pep talk about taking risks (if so, you may now roll your eyes). Despite all the rhetoric encouraging\u00a0calculated risk-taking,\u00a0it is the rare\u00a0PM who\u00a0has not been\u00a0severly punished\u00a0for doing just that when the\u00a0risk taken\u00a0ends in disaster.<\/p>\n
“No Risk, No Reward,” we are all told, but despite copious amounts of hard data\u00a0supporting this assertion, a good risk that fails never goes unpunished, let alone rewarded. No wonder, then, so many of us are risk-avoiders. Strange, isn’t it, since all great achievements involve taking some and often huge risks.\u00a0 It can take may failures to achieve one\u00a0great success.\u00a0A wonderful\u00a0(and oft quoted) example\u00a0is Edison’s quest for the ideal lightbulb filament.\u00a0 He had a spectular number of failures (6,000+) before he found the answer…which as you know has been an amazing success (only now, more than 125 years later,\u00a0being replace by those awful CFLs ;-).<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it is human nature to punish failure and you don’t need a Ph.D. in spacecraft propulsion to understand the forces at work. People rise to the top of an organization\u00a0based on their successes, not their failures. By\u00a0completing the project on time, closing that big deal, or solving that\u00a0tough technical challenge, we move the company forward and are rewarded for it. It is the success, not the many preceding failures, that gets recognized in the company newsletter,\u00a0department\u00a0review, and performance appraisal.\u00a0\u00a0Failures are perceived as\u00a0impediments to success, so we treat them as a bad thing. Nobody\u00a0talks about their failures with pride. To make matters worse, we are discouraged from spending any quality time learning from\u00a0our failures as we must immediately get to work our our next task or project with our competition\u00a0breathing down our neck. (Do you ever\u00a0take the time study\u00a0post-project reviews from past projects?\u00a0 Yeah, what post-project review?) The unintended message to everyone is: “Go fast; Take risks; Just don’t screw up!” The result is\u00a0an organization filled with paranoid, risk-averse people.<\/p>\n
What can we do to encourage more risk-taking in our teams? Here are a few tips that, if followed by a risk-taker (that would be\u00a0you), can help move a risk-averse organization toward a more risk-tolerant one (notice I didn’t say risk-embracing, or even risk-accepting…I’m a pragmatist):<\/p>\n
1) Keep track of risks taken that result in failures as much as you do successes. Look for and document the benefits or lessons-learned for each of them and make them known in project meetings and management reviews;<\/p>\n
2) In addition to the list of successes we all include in the annual performance reviews for each of our team members, ask your folks to give you a list of risks taken that ended in failure, along with the\u00a0lessons learned from them. Ask them also to tell you how those failures contributed to the company’s bottom line in a positive way;<\/p>\n
3) Reward calculated (not reckless) risk-taking that results in failures and good learnings. Use the same mechanisms that successes are rewarded in your company (lunches, stock, cash, praise, promotions, raises, etc);<\/p>\n
4) Celebrate the most spectacular failures in a big way, but be sure to make the lessons-learned and benefits clear, lest you get a team that creates failures just to get recognition and a free lunch (oh, sorry, I let my risk-averse side peek through);<\/p>\n
5) And, don’t forget to celebrate those risks taken that result in successes…obviously.<\/p>\n
Go ahead, be BOLD!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m sure you’ve\u00a0all heard that old saying, “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":774,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-risk-management","tag-risk-taking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/774"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14171,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/14171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}