adminShelter Chieza Change Management
I am one of those people that likes tom play it safe, I prefer safe routes, safe driving and safe neighbourhood.
I generally strive to maintain a safe lifestyle. Some people would see people with the same opinion as mine as extremely boring and tiring and have nothing new to offer. But for some reason, this is not the case with my career and business acumen. I have taken chances in a lot of male dominated industries that require the hard crunchy woman. It’s all in the mind, really.
Becoming a risk taker requires deviation from the status quo. Risk brings up images of danger, hazards or even loss.
But no matter how dangerous the idea of risk taking is, there is an even greater danger of not taking risks. Risks are a key ingredient to living life to the fullest.
Whenever I get an opportunity to present on Risk Analysis I always tell the story a lady called Margot Woelk, Adolf Hitler’s former food taster who spent the last few years of World War II eating meals and fearing that each mouthful could result in her death.
According to the story she was served a plate of food and forced to eat it between 11 and 12 every morning during the last 2 years of the Nazi German leader’s life.
If she and the rest of the girls did not fall ill, the food was packed into boxes and taken to Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair, a military headquarters located deep in woodland, in what is today North-Eastern Poland.
I tried to imagine the kind of life this woman would lead — yes it was a job which had to be managed.
Woelk lived in fear that every meal she ate would be her last. She said that they were always terrified that the food might be poisoned because Hitler’s spies had hinted that England wanted to poison him.
She had to live each day as it came. Way after Hitler’s death, she said that she still has nightmares about her role as a food taster and did not speak about her experiences for decades after the war.
But you see everything in life is risky, even starting a business is risky. Working for someone else is risky too.
Your employers are the ones that decide what to give you and how much to give you. They may decide when to retrench you and will look for every possible excuse.
The skills of becoming a successful risk taker can be learnt. The first thing you need to do is make sure you’re looking at risk the right way.
I love watching comedians performing. I have watched a lot of comedians grow — it’s extremely difficult to make Zimbabweans laugh, trust me. Professional stand up comedians get to introduce new comic material to their act and gauge the effect on the audience.
If it doesn’t work, they get rid of it and try something else. What you see in major competitions is now a series of carefully calibrated routines they have tested out over many attempts.
Entrepreneurs also do the same. The Strive Masiyiwa of this world did not get it right the first time but achieved success after a few setbacks.
Most often we just get to know about their success stories and very little about the challenges they faced.
I have told myself over and over again that there is no such thing as failure. There is only feedback.
I opened a home interior shop in a certain part of town and did not sell as much, I refused to give up but saw it as an opportunity to try again in another area.
The best way to become a successful risk taker is to start small. Try an exotic kind of food you’ve never eaten before, take a road trip somewhere, or just start talking to more people. Just get in the habit of saying yes to new things.
Some things might not be as good as you expected, but you’ll be surprised how often you find something great.
Leadership always requires some level of risk taking. Risks are necessary to make changes happen and there will always be both personal risk, risk to followers as well as to the organization or group involved.
Good business leaders often feel very lonely. Running a business is tough. Key decision making, charting the way forward, clarifying strategy, personal development are some of the key challenges that weigh down on leaders’ shoulders.
No wonder some of them sometimes have nights as they struggle to come up with solutions.
Some of the jobs that we take up are quite hazardous, but are they worth it- would the scale not tip if we weigh the benefits against the losses but we do them anyway because risk taking is part of our nature as humans.
Till next week, may God richly bless you.
Shelter Chieza is an Advisor in management issues. She can be contacted at [email protected]
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