Are You A Risk Taker?

Are you a risk taker? How often do you take risks?  In the IT world and the highly sought after “0 downtime environment”, risk taking is often discouraged.  This is understandable to a degree but are there areas where we can take reasonable risks in order to further our productivity?  I believe so and I’ll try and explain in this post why I feel that risk taking can have its advantages.

I just finished reading the book “Delivering Happiness” by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.  Tony mentions in his book how risk taking is encouraged at Zappos and that it is even mixed into their core values and culture.  It’s part of embracing and driving change in your environment because what worked yesterday will not necessarily work today, and what works tomorrow will probably change from what works today.  It’s a super fast pace world out there and in order to keep up we have to take risks. 

One of the ways I take risks personally is with my time.  Time is not only money for me but it also means quality time with family and loved ones.  Some things I do on a daily basis are tedious but necessary.  I’m always looking for ways to make these tasks easier and automated.  Kind of a “Work Smarter, not Harder” attitude.  How can I apply this to risk taking?  There are many times that I will spend more time trying to find a more efficient process to complete a task than it would take to just finish the task the normal way.  This is a risk because I’m investing a lot of my time trying to find new processes.  It doesn’t always pay off either.  Sometimes I’m unable to find a faster process and I’ve wasted those hours and now I have nothing to show for it.  Other times, I do find the more efficient process I was seeking and it cuts down my task completion time considerably.  It’s a risk, but in the long run it almost always pays off for me, so I believe it’s a risk worth taking. 

Of course, not all risks are worth it.  I like to think of it as healthy and unhealthy risk taking.  Any time you start cutting corners, I would call this unhealthy risk taking.  What you risk from cutting corners is often whether or not something blows up due to your lack of due diligence and more important, you’re risking your credibility.  Don’t ever disadvantage someone else in order to get ahead. 

On the other hand, I would define a risk as healthy when it coincides with a healthy, determined and passionate desire to make things better.  Be smart about it and always consider how your risk might impact others.  One of the most healthy risks (and possibly the hardest) is to disadvantage yourself for the benefit of the team.  It may seem you’re losing out in the short term, but in the grand scheme of things it builds trust and shows character, commitment, and compassion towards your team members.

These things can be applied to almost all aspects of life and healthy risk taking is something I try to improve on not only at work but in my personal life as well.  Change is good, it’s how we get better, and we have to drive that change by taking risks.