Risk-taking and opportunity-seeking for success

Everybody takes risks. Organisations take risk.

Risk-taking is part of life.

The life you live depends on the smart choices or informed decisions you make. Success depends on the right risks you take. Context and timing are important success factors.

People decide to take risky actions. The biggest risk is not taking one. Doing nothing is a decision.

The key to your success is to make the right informed decisions under uncertainty or risk. Take the right amount of risk. And take the right risks at the appropriate time and in specific situations. This will increase your likelihood and extent of your success. This occurs when you achieve your objectives and effectively manage your risks.

What matters is how rewarding or dangerous the risk is to you or the outcome you are seeking.

1. Taking risks in life helps you learn what you like and what you don’t like.
2. Some risks can lead to making wiser decisions and smart choices in the future.
3. Taking risks can be exciting and fun. It could lead to bigger opportunities, rewards and profits.
4. Some risks can come at a greater cost than others. It could lead to harm, injury or negative consequences.

Everybody is different in the types and amount of risk they are willing to take. Not all risk is the same.

This is called ‘risk-taking’. It involves activities that may result in opportunities or threats to oneself or someone else. The consequences can either be positive or negative. Not all risk is negative.

The guiding principles are:

1. Maximise the opportunities or reward.
2. Minimise the threats or harm.

There are lots of factors to take into consideration when deciding whether to take a risk or not. But nobody can make you take a risk that you’re not ok with.

Sometimes you don’t spend much time thinking about it. It can happen in a few seconds, especially when we’re put on the spot and must decide right away.

You might rely on gut instinct to decide. Or, if you have the time to think before you take a risk, you might ask yourself these questions:

• What might happen? What might happen to me and others around me?
• Will it impact my work? Will it affect my friendships or family?
• Is this illegal? Can I hurt myself doing this? Is this dangerous?
• Am I comfortable with this?
• What are the consequences of my decision?

Risk-taking for teens and young people

The greater the potential for hurting themselves or someone else, the greater the risk. Until they turn 25, parts of their brain involved in decision making are still growing.

Let’s look at some of the reasons behind young people’s risk-taking behaviours:

• Pressure from others – friends, family, etc.
• Wanting to belong or ‘fit in’ with a group.
• The rush of excitement that comes with risk-taking.

Testing boundaries and taking some risks is a healthy way for teens and young people to learn limits and knowing themselves better.

There are many different forms of risk-taking. The level of risk involved can increase depending on the age of the person.

Some risk-taking behaviours include:

1. Drug and alcohol use.
2. Unsafe sexual activity.
3. Exposure to risks online.
4. Illegal activities or gang involvement.

Learning to be an independent adult involves understanding how to handle opportunities and risky situations. Talking with somebody you trust can help you figure out what you are ok with and what you are not.

Encourage teens and young people to maximise opportunities/upside risks or minimise threats/downside risks.

Having good communication allows adults and parents to know what and how their child is doing, especially when they’re not with you.

Other strategies include:

1. Giving young people information about opportunities and risks.
2. Talking about the rules and boundaries and help them understand why they’re important.
3. Encouraging safe yet exciting events like travel, camping or sports.
4. Talking openly about peer and sexual pressure and smart ways and choices of dealing with it.
5. Exposing them with world-class decision-making process like PrOACT 31000.

Risk-taking for adults

Taking risk can be exciting.

Great, otherwise unforeseen opportunities often come from risk-taking and opportunity-seeking. Don’t view risk-taking negatively. Regarding it as dangerous and even unwise is unhelpful. But while some risks certainly don’t pay off, it’s important to remember that some do. These are opportunities.

Constantly reframing risk as an opportunity to succeed rather than a path to failure.

People who have been successful in life or business are willing to take on risky challenges that others would say, “Oh, I’m not sure I want to do that.”

If you look at your career or work, you could say, “Wow, this is this great opportunity. It has allowed me to learn new things, taking on a bigger role and working in a bigger organisation.“

But some people would view that as, “Are you crazy? What do you know about diabetes? What do you know about washing machines or the food industry or automobiles or the agricultural industry?“

Taking a risk is also a great opportunity to stand out. You could present yourself as a leader, not as a follower satisfied with the status quo.

There are also opportunities for personal growth. You learn more when you take risk or are at risk. There is a link between risk and learning. It may lead you to take jobs that people would think “you can’t do that, that’s just impossible.“

Beyond being personally or professionally beneficial, taking risks may be a necessary step in actively or intentionally pursuing success.

Taking risk is about putting one foot in front of the other and start in faith on your journey. Be comfortable that you can think or work your way through and execute your way through to the desired outcome. There will be experimentation along the way.

Risk-taking and opportunity-seeking can be of benefit to you. They may even open you up to a world of possibilities you have yet to consider.

For professionals and young people, the outside world that is outside their comfort zone can be huge and scary.

Until you are willing to put yourself out there and take a risk or seize opportunities, you will never be able to achieve professional success and realise your true potential.

It is, therefore, time to leave your comfort zone. To go after what you are passionate about and to achieve your dreams.

Embrace risk-taking and opportunity-seeking to help you achieve success and overcome the fear of failure. Failure isn’t the end of your journey to success. It is usually the beginning. Failure is not the opposite of success but a stepping-stone to your success.

Risk-taking and opportunity-seeking do not occur in a vacuum. There are preparation, education and processes to follow. Do your homework. Understand the importance of implementation and follow-through. Don’t just throw a bunch of ideas without seeing through the whole process and what the end should be or look like.

Risk-taking for organisations

Taking risks, seizing opportunities and dealing with uncertainty are essential parts of doing business and running an organisation.

The word enterprise derives from the Latin impresum, meaning ‘taking upon oneself’, ‘to capture’, ‘to seize’, or ‘to occupy’. It describes the act of carrying out actions with the intent to achieve objective and success.

Enterprise is another word for a for-profit business, a company or an organisation. But it is most often associated with entrepreneurial ventures.

An enterprise or organisation is a group of people who collectively work to achieve common or shared goals. This objective can be attained only if the organisation prepares itself with the productive factors required for producing and delivering the products and services that can satisfy the needs of its stakeholders.

An organisation is characterised by uncertainty in conducting its operations and creating or delivering value to its stakeholders. This uncertainty is an inherent element of organisational risk. Organisations and the risks generated in operating them are inseparable.

No business or organisation operates without taking risk and seizing opportunities. Rewards or profits earned by an organisation compensates it for risk-taking.

Risk management

To manage risk correctly, you must acknowledge its positive and negative effects. Risk management must look at both the downside of risk or threats and the potential upside or opportunities.

In other words, risk management is not just about minimising exposure to the wrong risks. It also is about increasing exposure to good risks.

Ultimately, the objective of managing risk is to make the organisation more valuable. It is to increase the value of the business. For directors and managers of the organisation, this is the primary objective.

To accomplish this objective, it is important to consider how a given risk management action will translate into one of the business value inputs – cash flows from existing assets, value-adding growth, length of the competitive advantage period, and cost of capital.

Successful organisations, over time, can attribute their successes not to avoiding risk but to seeking out and taking the “right risks” or opportunities. Success in risk-taking or opportunity-seeking is as much a result of design as of luck.

A key choice for organisations is the design of the organisation to optimise the benefits from risk-taking and opportunity-seeking. Risk-taking and opportunity-seeking occur within a context that includes the organisation’s leadership and culture, systems, and capabilities.

Call to action

A good decision or smart choice comes from knowing yourself well or knowing the organisation well.

When you know your limits and what you are comfortable with, it can lead to easier and better decision making.

Try turning these concerns into strengths.

Sometimes it’s good to take a risk or seize opportunities when it pushes you outside of your comfort zone and helps you achieve success and objectives.

At other times, taking risks can have serious negative consequences on your health, relationships, education, work, or organisation.

If you need support in your decision-making process, want to make a better-informed decision, or just talk your decision through with someone, contact me via email.

Talking helps!

I am here for you.