Because today’s marketplace offers an abundance of the unknown, it’s important to develop creative risk taking strategies. This means you must become a creative risk taker and learn to “play to win” not “play not to lose”.
Although Creative Risk Takers play to win, they know that success is never permanent and failure never fatal. They seldom see failure as something from which we cannot recover. They are self-directed enough to tolerate rejection and take responsibility for their actions. Creative Risk Takers also tend to control the odds with their creative risk taking strategies. They set limits on their losses, not risking more than they can afford to lose. Creative Risk Takers are also realistic in appraising people and circumstances, including themselves.
The first step in becoming a more creative risk taker is to expand your comfort zone. Draw on your
existing skills, interests and experience to put yourself in new situations where your chance of success are good and changes of failure are modest.
The following eight strategies are designed to assist you in moving towards a greater level of creative risk taking regardless of your normal risk taking style.
- Diagnose the unwritten rules of the organization. Understand how things really get done.
- Determine the tolerable limits of your own personal risk taking. What’s your normal comfort level?
- Build a power base before acting. Become a critical technical resource or become more connected to the power
network in the organization. - Know when to admit defeat and cut losses. Beware of a preference for avoiding risk.
- Take short-term losses for long-term gains. Tell the customer the truth or lose face if necessary to preserve the relationship.
- Observe the obvious. Confronting assumptions often prevents disasters even though it may cause some immediate pain.
- Break rules to get the job done. Breaking the spirit of an organization’s policy should be approached very carefully.
- Never risk more than you or your company can afford to lose.
What else do you need to know to develop creative risk taking strategies? Let me know what you think. Leave a comment below.
Great point. The best sales people are entrepreneurial. And on of the essences of entrepreneurship is risk-taking. So it follow that the best sales people are risk-takers. I like it; will use it with clients.