How Successful Leaders Balance Risk and Opportunity

Proper risk management is often used to support implementation programs which provide a reasonable assurance that defined targets will be met. However, most often, these targets are set without true consideration of what is possible and what is not. Sometimes, targets set are essentially a “mission impossible” for the implementation team to meet and efforts made are often lost. In other situations, targets defined provide easy “walk in the park” achievements to meet – which is not inspiring or developing for anyone either.

Now imagine a process where the target is drafted to e.g. 1500. The implementation team prepares a plan and properly address risks, levers and uncertainties. This plan shows there is a 95% likelihood of meeting this target and as such, the target is not the ambitious stretched target it was intended to be. The implementation plan also shows a 60% likelihood of meeting/exceeding a level of 1900. What does the well driven company do. Aim for the 1500 and live happily ever after with a performance of 1520, or adjust the target at 1900, well aware this is truly stretched, and fully acknowledge a result of 1750 as good, despite this being below the revised target?

Business success is about meeting truly ambitious targets, but as Mario Andretti stated “If everything is under control, you are moving too slow”.

This session will show and discuss an example of why and how to revisit targets before the implementation is set in motion. The question “how certain are we to meet the target” is reversed to “what can you achieve with an X% likelihood” – a reverse engineering type of approach.