Embrace Risk on Your Way to Innovation
How do we create an environment of constructive risk-taking that launches successful and innovative products and services?
Some industries fetishize successful risk taking — seeking out and celebrating the heightened feeling of reward when success is achieved against the odds. Venture capital firms, casinos, amusement parks, and blood-sports like UFC all benefit from our love of risk.
Studies have shown that the potential for physical harm in sports contributes to a heightened sense of excitement, pleasure, and sense of social connected-ness. There are many anecdotes and examples of the ways that precarious conditions drive people to bond and create strong teams. We often think of risk-taking as a requirement for creativity. But risk by itself won’t generate creative output or innovation.
How do we create an environment of constructive risk-taking that launches successful and innovative products and services?
Fail better. Again. And together.
There is a classic Samuel Beckett line: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” The “fail better” approach is important because so many adults are deeply invested in narrow definitions of success and avoid situations which include uncertainty and ambiguity.
While we applaud and support exploratory and creative play with children, play for adults is often limited to games and sport where winning and losing are the primary metrics of success. By prioritizing the win, we can end up a developing risk aversion to situations where we may ‘look stupid’ or need to ask for help.
Beckett reminds us to look for playful opportunities where we can find pleasure in problem solving, challenging endeavours, or experimenting with the unknown. Innovation requires a team to be willing to get things wrong en route to getting them right.
Humour is important, seriously.
A sense of humour is the best companion to embracing failure. This seems simple and trivial, but part of fear of failure is our adult tendency to take things very seriously, which raises the stakes on any risk-taking.
Recently, after a particularly difficult yoga class, I overheard someone tell the instructor, “it’s so lovely to feel like I can laugh in class, it makes [yoga] so much easier.” It struck me on two levels: first, how seriously we take ourselves (even during our leisure time), and secondly how laughter created a better space for deeper learning.
In this case, humour contributed to a safer environment and more forgiving mentality when working on new complex tasks. Failing collectively with a sense of humour contributed to collaboration, words of encouragement and more meaningful pedagogical experiences. The key here is take the problem and work seriously, but not yourself.
Build trust through vulnerability
One of my favourite take-ways from a philosophy and biomedicine course involved exploring our common vulnerability, and how this human condition is deeply significant to building empathy and trust. A key part to creating a work culture that embraces constructive risk-taking involves building a team where members feel both challenged and supported in taking on more difficult initiatives.
Strong, resilient teams that support members’ constructive risk taking:
- Acknowledge that at times everyone struggles, fails, gets hurt, needs help, etc.
- Re-frame failures as learning opportunities that can contribute to future innovations
- Build on prior experiences of mutual support
- Develop empathy and trust with clients and within your team
- Assign appropriate challenges according to the person’s or team’s level of experience
This way, a company can set their team up for success with room for constructive failing while fostering an enthusiasm for tackling challenges.
How does your team use risk?
