Most organisations are 'risk averse' in nature but understand that their culture can be made much more effective in adapting to changes in the environment if they can encourage their people to take some thoughtful risks. This does not happen by accident but must be carefully designed and engineered into the organisation. You cannot move from a culture which values certainty of action to one where risk is encouraged. After all, how much risk is 'thoughtful' and how does this differ from 'foolish'. Companies like Apple, 3M and GE would never have blossomed if they had forced their staff to stay within the confines of their specific roles. Organisations that want to commit to encouraging staff to take 'thoughtful risks' require to redesign their culture carefully.

Benefits of Risk

No individual, team or organisation ever achieved much by sticking purely to the rules of the game. In order to function effectively, the people within the business have to think differently about the role they fulfil and how it interacts with others. If organisations fail to take risks they will probably not grow and not only will the organisation and its management team be standing still, but actually are slipping backwards over time. Nowadays standing still is not an option. Organisations have to encourage their staff at all levels to 'challenge the process' and look for new ways to do everything faster, better, cheaper, and implement change faster than the competition.

A Critical Question

Consider if you ran your own business - would you prefer to have people who always adhered to the orthodox way of working, or would you encourage enterprise, initiative and challenge into the business culture? Surely most people would opt for the second strategy because it builds a culture of curiosity that permeates all levels of the organisation. So many would value this as a key 'driver' in any theoretical business, yet when it comes to managerial behaviour in the real world we find most people prefer to manage staff in a transactional rather than a transformational manner.

Steps to encourage risk and build it into the business

• Review all strategies and policies and consider how they either promote innovation, performance improvement and change or stifle individual initiative
• " Pay attention to performance management and assess the degree to which 'risk ' is rewarded in career advancement
• Assess how far the concept of 'challenge' is build into team and individual development through leadership development
• Analyse in the culture where risk is accepted as the norm, and where it is frowned upon by senior staff
• Appraise what motivates people to move up and across the organisation - is it the intrinsic nature of the role and the variety of the task or is it purely remunerative in nature
• How do you recognise achievement for thinking and working outside the box?
• Start the process of challenge from the top of the organisation through a leadership programme based upon 'trust' rather than 'control'
• Regularly attack bureaucracy where it stifles initiative
• Encourage staff to take personal action to remove any process or activity that gets in the way of dealing with customer issues
• Create a practice for those who never meet the customer to support those that do, by understanding that without a sale there is no business activity