A Lesson in Risk Analysis: Risk — Persistence — Reward

A Lesson in Leadership: Risk — Persistence — Reward

A good friend shared a fascinating story with me last week. He explained that his middle school-aged daughter recently satisfied her eclectic taste recently by purchasing an old briefcase at a local thrift store. He laughed as he explained that she planned to transport her school books. That the briefcase was so cheap surely was related to the fact that it was locked — and nobody knew the combination. Despite this risk, his young daughter gladly made the purchase, toted it home, and set out in earnest to crack the lock’s combination. Night after night, she persisted in her endeavor until one morning she proudly declared victory. “By the way,” my friend explained with a chuckle, “the code is 2–2–4.”

That’s would be happy ending, no doubt, but that’s not the ending. The story gets better — much better! As the young girl gleefully cracked the code and opened the case, she discovered a half dozen, rare Morgan Silver Dollars dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s! Some of these coins are valued at several hundred dollars. Not a bad reward for a six-dollar risk and a little persistence.

As my friend concluded the story, I couldn’t help but see the leadership lesson it revealed: This story parallels the risk associated with setting high goals for your team, working hard to accomplish them, then reaping more reward than you expected.

The right goals are worth the risk (even if the risk is “only” failure). They’re also worth the persistent effort required to accomplish them. In fact, such effort is often worth more than the reward of accomplishment itself. And, in many cases where risk of failure isn’t catastrophic, some great lessons (which are also rewards) can be learned through failure. And other times, the reward of accomplishment is far better than that which was expected.

Give this some thought. Are you avoiding setting new goals for your team because there’s some risk involved? Assess that risk and determine whether it’s worth taking. Maybe a more useful determination is whether the reward could be greater than the risk. Who knows? You just might be surprised by what you find.

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A Lesson in Risk Analysis: Risk — Persistence — Reward was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.