I’ve always liked this insight from Seth Godin:
“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.”
Organizations can spot the risks of a new idea a mile away. But there’s a curious blind spot when it comes to the risks of not taking those risks.
The path of least resistance is to play it safe and keep as close to the tried-and-true as possible.
I stumbled across an interesting HBR article from Bill Taylor called “Playing It Safe Is Riskier Than You Think”. In it, he writes about an analogy of risk first framed by two business professors 35 years ago.
“Executives and entrepreneurs face two very different sorts of risks. One is that their organization will make a bold move that failed — a risk they call ‘sinking the ship.’ The other is that their organization will fail to make a bold move that would have succeeded — a risk they call ‘missing the boat.’
“Naturally, most executives worry more about sinking the boat than missing the boat, which is why so many organizations, even in flush times, are so cautious and conservative. To me, though, the opportunity for executives and entrepreneurs is to recognize the power of rocking the boat — searching for big ideas and small wrinkles, inside and outside the organization, that help you make waves and change course.”
When we’re leading a project, particularly at a large company, I think that’s a big part of our job — to continually find ways to rock the boat.
The most remarkable ideas go against the flow. But we don’t want to sacrifice the remarkable parts of the idea for the comfort of a smoother ride.
We can’t always change the inherent risk aversion of an organization. But we can rock the boat.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
