Feedback Form
Home Features Mastermind Videos About Advertise Blog Network Contact
   

Have A Suggestion?
Toronto Salsa Classes / Toronto Salsa Lessons Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
Have A Suggestion?

Featured Ebook


ebook Famous Entrepreneurs - Modern Empire Builders


Featured Ebook

More Evan Carmichael
Have A Suggestion?

Sales Lessons From Starbucks And Dell

Risk: Making the leap



Risk: Making the leap
   

Imagine yourself standing on a platform 75 feet above the ground. There is no safety net and in front of you a trapeze bar swings toward you. It’s time to leap. Do you?

- Or -

Imagine yourself reviewing your organization’s performance indicators. Your company is not doing well. Something needs to change. You have to relinquish some of your control and listen to what your employees and customers are telling you. Can they speak candidly about what is on their minds?

Both scenarios require risk.

Risk is a potential exposure to loss or injury. It creates fear of the unknown.

On the downside, fear of risk results in stagnation. This is because if people are penalized for calculated risk-taking, they become fearful of new ideas. On the upside, risk is the fuel behind change and implementing new ideas.

As a collaborative team value, the ability to take calculated and well-reasoned risks is a foundation for building an effective organization with the capacity to learn about itself, to expand and grow.

Peter Kline and Bernard Saunders, in their book, Ten Steps to a Learning Organization (1993, Great Ocean Publishers, Inc.) write about the paradigm shift that was occurring in the 1990’s and is still occurring today as the Industrial Age gives way to the Information Age. For many organizational leaders, making the shift feels like leaping to catch a trapeze. So many hesitate because they believe they will be left dangling in the air.

For one reason, with this shift a higher percentage of workers are required to make decisions on their own without management intervention. Instead of being passive extensions of production lines, their involvement and commitment is required. Accountability is expected and training in problem solving and decision making skill development is required. Many leaders resist letting go of control because they have not spent time and resources to train their employees. They are still stuck in the Industrial Age mindset, even though statistics show that a well informed leader, operating on their own information in new territory will make the correct decision less than 50% of the time. In today’s marketplace, these are not bankable odds.

For another reason, the new hope for North American businesses is their ability to draw the fullest amount of creativity and innovation from their employees. In order to do that, organizations have to supply their people with the necessary systems and tools. Kline and Saunders insist that progress towards a learning organization has to be an organizational transformation. This requires frame-breaking change where mistakes happen.

Therefore, organizations that fail to look at errors as just another step toward success lose a valuable market edge. They are not as responsive to external change -- such as the declining housing market or market competition -- as more innovative organizations.

As a result, when employees and customers are asked for their opinions, fear and denial often surface. Fear of accountability, of speaking out, of change and denial of those fears lead to paralysis and bureaucracy. Therefore, organizational fear has to be confronted on all levels from the custodian to the CEO. And, fear is directly correlated with the ability to risk.

Therefore, what behaviors damage the collaborative core value risk?

• Retaliation against people who make thoughtful decisions that result in a mistake
• Failure to clarify goals, procedures and expectations
• Criticism
• Fear of failure
• Perfectionism and over-analysis


What behaviors build risk?

• Performance feedback and coaching
• Establishing accountability and commitment at all levels of the organization
• Debriefing completed projects and developing improvement processes
• Recognizing honest mistakes are learning tools

Moderate risk-taking is a learnable skill as long as fear and threat of retaliation are absent. More importantly, risk-taking is an organizational attitude that is modeled throughout the organization, especially at the top.

Without risk being tolerated at the cultural level, many organizations penalize people for thinking. Likewise they fail to put into place the safety net that allows their organizations to make the leap. A good safety net requires structure, nurturing, minimum critical feedback and maximum constructive coaching, and encouragement for well-reasoned risk.


Risk: Making the leap - To learn more about this author, visit Dianne Crampton's Website.

Like this article? Share it with your friends
[Get Copyright Permissions] E-Mail | Print | More  


Related Articles Related Articles
Attracting Clients With Incremental Marketing
  Do you ask prospective clients to go too far? Must your new clients take a “leap of faith” when they engage you?
Its Just a Number
  Age is a funny thing, it’s something that people want to speed up and slow down all within the span of a few years. As a child do you recall saying “I can’t wait until I’m all grown up?” I’ll bet that at some point ...
Lesson #2: Growth Happens in Bounds and Leaps – of Faith
  Jeff Bezos is a risk taker. There are no other words to describe the man who put everything he had into a venture that many said was doomed to failure, even calling it Amazon.toast for the company’s first five years...
Risk: Making the leap
  As a collaborative team value, the ability to take calculated and well-reasoned risks is a foundation for building an effective organization with the capacity to learn about itself, to expand and grow. When fear...
Build Your Boats Before You Need Them
  A lot of folks thinking about starting a business spend all their time doing the typical start-up stuff like incorporating, finding office space, and designing business cards. All good and needed steps mind you, but...

Related Forum Posts Related Forum Posts
Overcoming your fear to get started Overcoming your fear to get started
Update: Making Your First Million ebook Update: Making Your First Million ebook
How to valuate a business How to valuate a business
Show the Benefits Show the Benefits
Leap of Faith Leap of Faith
If you had a million dollars... If you had a million dollars...
Re: Just got laid off, new user Re: Just got laid off, new user

Related Forum Posts Related Businesses - Evan Elite Authors

The Evan Elite Authors program is currently in beta phase. For details please contact us.


 
About the Author


Dianne Crampton
(Visit Dianne's Website)
Dianne Crampton is an Executive Leadership Coach and Team Building Consultant and creator of the TIGERS team development model. For the past twenty years she has helped leaders and teams achieve goals with high levels of collaboration and teamwork. Crampton is a published author. Her contribution to Working Together: Diversity As Opportunity was endorsed by Stephen Covey. She has written for trade magazines. Merrill Lynch nominated her business for Inc. Magazine’s regional small business and entrepreneurial awards. Her work with Native Americans was recognized at a United Nations sponsored conference in 1994. The TIGERS model passed two rigorous validation studies in 1992 and 1994. The TIGERS Survey is able to measure and track team development over time. Dianne is also the creator and distributor of the TIGERS Team Wheel game. This game helps groups identify behaviors that build collaborative groups and behaviors that cause conflict, morale problems, production failures, and misunderstandings. For more information, or to subscribe to TigerTracks, a free monthly leadership and team newsletter go to www.core values.com
Have A Suggestion?

View Author's Blog
Become An Author

View Author's Video
Become An Author

Free Downloads


Dianne Crampton's

Complete
List Of
Work-Life
Articles

First Name
Last Name
Email
 
If you enjoyed this article, get Dianne Crampton's Complete List of Work-Life Articles For FREE!

More Dianne Crampton
As a leader are you a candidate for burnout
Leading Like TIGERS A Model For Teamwork
A Leaders Coping Strategy A Holistic Approach To Burnout That Can Dramatically Decrease Physical And Mental Stress Symptoms With In 30 Days
Trust Walking the Talk
Five Tips For Building A Wildly Successful Team Based Business
Genuineness Can You Bring Problems To Light
Team Interdependence When We Win I Win
Its not only what you say that counts its what you do
Success The Collaborative Win
What You Need To Know Before You Join A Community Problem Solving Effort
Become An Author