Failure To Judge The Risk
The Dual-Edged Challenge That Causes So Many Problems In Our Lives
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Failure To Judge The Risk
The Dual-Edged Challenge That Causes So Many Problems In Our Lives
Written by a human, for humans, always.
I was recently at an event...
The kind where you have the “nose-bleed” section within a stadium...
And I was watching some people...
Realizing...
How awful our ability to judge risk is as a society.
In their particular case...
People were stepping up, over, and around folding chairs...
In the nose-bleed section...
Where they could have easily fallen...
Down a pretty steep slope of chairs...
While failing to have good body structure or balance that would justify the gymnastics they were attempting to do.
Did any of it end badly?
Thankfully not...
But the levels of risk at play...
And the sheer audacity to ignore all of the risks...
For the sake of a picture...
Was staggering to me.
But...
It is also not surprising...
Because it is a norm that we see all of the place...
Except it is actually a dual-edged challenge in judging the risk.
What do I mean?
In this particular scenario that I mentioned...
The individuals were highly underestimating the risk involved.
What could have been at stake?
Fractures and tears...
Broken limbs...
Concussion...
Paralysis...
Certain people closer to the front of the nose-bleed section could risk falling from heights onto concrete below...
Worse...
For a relatively low payoff.
But this is not the only place we see this type of risk.
I have seen it many times in leadership and entrepreneurship...
Where people take extremely high risks...
High levels of debt...
Trust in individuals and organizations with terrible records...
Entire restructurings and rebranding around theories that have not been well tested...
Such as we have seen around “replacing” employees with “lower-cost” AI that have not been proven to successfully replaced workforces at any verifiable scale yet, while all remaining employees who are already in burnout are forced to work more and simultaneously being forced to use a technology without proper training...
Or take actions that are anywhere from morally and legally gray...
To actively taking illegal actions...
For payoffs that never came.
There is another side of this, where we become too trusting in individuals or institutions...
Who are actively or indirectly doing things that cause us harm...
That we believe are trustworthy that are not...
Where we believe their statements, research, or accomplishments while failing pay any real attention to what is “actually” happening.
I have seen so many people used and abused by failing to pay attention to the risks...
And following people and organizations blindly.
But it plays out in other ways too...
People who stay in relationships where they honestly believe that...
The other person “will” change...
Eventually...
Until of course, something horrible happens.
Or the person who believe that what they put into their bodies is not really “that” bad...
But then they end up with a life-long, debilitating diagnosis...
Which people do not have any known solutions to.
That is one side of failing to judge the risk...
But there is the other side...
Where we deem the risk far too high...
When the reality is that the risk is significantly less than we had believed.
You see this all the time in the world...
Where people believe that the conditions are not right to take action...
That the timing is wrong...
That if they do something, there will be all sorts of catastrophic results.
The reality in most of these situations is that they will not end up like this...
Nowhere near them.
Or where people have a desire to start a relationship...
But fail to initiate any contact...
When the other person wanted the same.
Or when people believe that something will take too long...
Therefore they disqualify themselves...
Before even seeing if their perceptions were even correct.
On both ends of these spectrums...
We find that we are truly awful at judging the risk of things...
And most people...
Hit both extremes in different ways.
They will judge one thing too risky when it really is not...
Then judge another thing unlikely to be risk...
And end up being decimated at both ends of these extremes when they fail to judge correctly on either.
Truly, we are awful at judging risk.
But why is that?
Often it has to do with three conflicting challenges...
Our perceptions, our desires and beliefs, and our categorization.
On the one hand...
We discover that our perceptions have been skewed in all sorts of different directions...
Mostly incorrect...
Which causes us to perceive these incorrectly...
Leading to our downfall.
We have seen this with the rise of social media, the many grifters who promise things that are untrue, and the repetition bias or illusory truth effect.
We discover that our desires and beliefs cause us to judge things early...
Skewing the data toward a specific belief...
Creating confirmation bias of the results.
We see this when we believe ourselves to be one way and so act in that way, such as being shy or being confident, as well as when our desires cause us to miss red flags.
Then we have the challenge of categorization...
Where we seek to split the world into categories that are “easy” to understand...
Usually turning things into more simple categories...
That are simply untrue.
Black and white thinking.
We see this with deeming things either “too risky” or “lacking risk”, when the truth is that there is a whole spectrum of risk with very complicated payoffs or lack thereof.
You can have high risk with low payoff.
You can have low risk with high payoff.
You can have medium risk with no payoff.
You can have one thing that is riskier than another, but both are tolerable risks.
You can have all sorts of things in between.
We are often so quick to create categories...
That we miss entire spectrums of possibilities by too quickly dismissing something.
For instance...
Maybe it is too risky to take out a huge loan to start a business...
But is there a way to start a business without any loan needed, with what you have?
Can you get started in one place and expand over time?
Or do you actually need to slow down...
Actually get a sense of what risks there actually are...
Not to stop you from moving forward...
But to address how you will approach them if you do encounter them...
And therefore not get blindsided when things do eventually go wrong...
Because every plan, no matter how good, will falter in some place.
You may need to slow down to get to a point where the potential major risks have a plan...
Leaving only nuisances left.
When we begin to understand risks better...
We have the potential to make it a lot further in life...
With better successes.
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So, how do we go about navigating the risks?
That is what we will look at next.
I have 7 questions to help you focus on not only what the risks actually are…
But how to navigate the risks to make progress toward the goals you have.
Let’s Dive In…
