If you own or lead a business, the word RISK is part of your every day vocabulary. Every decision a business leader makes carries with it some level of “risk analysis” before making it. Some of these decisions are easier than others and you may not be thinking about the word, but every decision involves you determining its level of risk to the organization (and possibly you).
How much Risk is too much Risk? This is always the dilemma leaders face.
When risks get to be too high, most leaders seek the advice of other leaders in the business…with an attempt to get more information so they can lower the risk of any particular decision. More information almost always helps lower the overall risk because you get input and perspectives from others. But how do you get this type of input if you don’t feel your leaders have many new and innovative thinking?
5 Ways to Help Lower Your RISK
Here are 5 ways you might consider to help you gain additional insights and perspectives so you can hopefully lower your decision risk and overall risk…
1
Mentors
Find some “experienced” mentors…other leaders who have either gone through similar situations, owned similar businesses, led businesses in same or similar industries, or have just gained some strong business acumen. These people can be invaluable to you along the way and help give you some new and innovative ways to think about a particular situation or your business overall.
2
Other Business Owners/CEOs
Find other business owners or CEOs (people who are responsible for everything in the business) who you can trust to talk to about your situation or your business. Even if they haven’t gone through what you are specifically in need of, they have the ability to ask you the right questions and help you think through the issue with greater objectivity and clarity.
3
Outside Advisors
Find some outside advisors who can act in a similar capacity to another business owner by asking good questions and offering insights based on their experience. A strong plus of an outside advisor is that they have generally seen a variety of companies and situations and as such, can give you some practical insights based on what others have faced and how they resolved a particular issue or dealt with a difficult situation.
4
Peer Groups
Find a strong peer group that has other business owners in it that are of similar size and complexity yet non-competing companies. If you find the right group, this can be an ongoing and regular opportunity to get some helpful and experiential insight into your situations. The key is to find a good leader who can bring this out of the group so you have the opportunity to gain the wisdom and experience from the other business owners.
5
Risk Analysis
There are several tools in the market that you can utilize to help you identify your key areas of risk ahead of time so you can proactively deal with these before they become a significant risk to your company. We offer one such tool, our Business Risk Assessment, that allows you to spend about 10 minutes and identify (at a high level in 4 categories) what your current risk might look like. There are other tools also in the market you might want to research and check out to give you some guidance and planning ideas.
The beauty of all 5 of these solutions to helping you lower your risk is that they aren’t mutually exclusive…you can utilize one of them or all 5 of them at the same time. They have different advantages and benefits and as such allow you to evaluate your risk from a variety of perspectives. I would encourage you to use all 5 to help you significantly lower your overall risk.
What to do next…
If you would like to learn more about these 5 items and how you might want to inject them into your business just let us know and we would be happy to talk you through what these mean and what they involve…and of course how they can help your individual business. We can help you think through all of them and build a plan for which ones would have the greatest impact to your business.
Also, if you just want to better understand how you can minimize and lower your risks using our proprietary tool then please read some more about risk management and how you can help determine your own risk. I’d also be happy to meet with you (complimentary of course) to discuss your own personal situation further and give you some insights about how you might want to proceed.
I hope you have found this helpful and given you a different way to look at your business. If it has, please share this with others inside your company and your colleagues who are running or leading other businesses. Our primary mission at Generations Law Group, LLP is to help everyone find productive ways to lower their business AND personal risk. This is just one way you can start to do this…but it will tell you a lot about you and what has happened over the past few years with regard to your business risk. Let’s make sure your risk is as low as it can be while you continue to grow.
