Tag: risk
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Mapping Risks
I’ve been thinking for some time now about the idea of how to map ‘upside’ and ‘downside’ visually. I was originally inspired by Diana Larsen’s ‘Prospective Analysis’ whereby new teams start thinking about a their assumptions and risks and benefits. It’s mapped out like below (taken from ‘Lift Off’ by Diana Larsen and Ashley Nies).…
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Improve your Uncertainty Tolerance
Breaking through paradigms with uncertainty! “Paradoxically, uncertainty holds potential for both pain and possibility. This potential lies in your uncertainty tolerance. Rather than just the avoidance of pain, uncertainty tolerance opens opportunities reserved for those who embrace the unknown.” From the research, Conniff knows that not only is “uncertainty the number one driver of anxiety,…
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East India Company & Risk
The East India Company became one of the largest companies that ever existed and controlled half of all world trade at one point. It’s beginnings (and it’s eventual success) are based on the innovation of risk taking: In 1599 Smythe and his associates had decided that, because of the huge expenses and high risks involved…
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Robinson Crusoe: The Inspiration for the Modern Man
Lewis Mumford writes that “the ideal man of the new order was Robinson Crusoe. No wonder he indoctrinated children with his virtues for two centuries, and served as the model for a score of sage discourses on the Economic Man. Robinson Crusoe was all the more representative as a tale not only because it was…
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Miners as Earliest Seekers of Asymmetric Upside
“In contrast to the forethought and sober plodding of the peasant, the work of the miner is the calm of random effort: irregular in routine and uncertain in result. Neither the peasant nor the herdsman can get rich quickly: the first clears a field or plants a row of trees this year from which perhaps…
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A Community as a Hedge Against Fragility
In the book ‘You are what you risk’ a similar point is made about the risk ecosystem – “the cultural social, policy and economic environment that affects the risk decisions of an individual or organisation.” Wucker tells the tale of how a couple found themselves in $1m of debt but were in a better situation…
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Adam Curtis on Risk, Change and Conservatism
I listened to the first half of Adam Curtis being interviewed by Russell Brand. Some interesting insights that caught my ear related to antifragility: Through this interpretation, I understand that change and volatility has been suppressed whilst, throughout this time, the systems we live in have become more and more fragile (because there was never…
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Calculated Risk Taking
There’s a nice chapter in the ‘Art of Action’ about the approach towards taking risks in the Prussian army: “There should be no fear of punishment if a calculated risk fails to pay off. Sins of omission should be regarded far more serious than sins of commission.” This links back to the notion of ‘risk…
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What Does Risk Mean?
If you think about the word ‘risk’ – what comes to mind? Throughout history, ‘risk’ has had slightly different connotations. Tracing the etymology, Michele Wucker provides a few clues into its various meanings, which could be summarized as: When I think about commercial settings, and the context in which risks are usually discussed, I think…
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Absolutely Certain
Yesterday, during the height of the latest European Football cup frenzy, I was driving around listening to a dreadful local radio station, and people were ringing in to the show to give their thoughts and opinions about the final between England and Italy. Some chap rang up and explained he was ‘absolutely convinced that England…