Every business owner knows the feeling. The tossing, the turning. Your brain won’t stop. There’s a problem, an issue, some sort of pain point that is gnawing at your belly and driving your anxiety through the roof!
Sound familiar? Of course it does. Whether you have something right this moment you’re wrestling with or had a challenge in the past we have all worked through adversity in our businesses. One of the unstated truths about the things that keep us up at night – they can all be distilled down to risk.
A business will never operate without risk.
We can never be risk free in any aspect of our lives and certainly not in our businesses. Good leaders and entrepreneurs will make risk – adjusted decisions. They’ll try to figure out what level of comfort they have for risk as well as their ability to manage to that risk. Risk always comes down not just to tolerance levels, but also to capacity. Can I afford to take the risk, even if I’m comfortable with it. A risk that could put your business out of business for example, you may be comfortable with taking, but your business does not likely have the capacity to take that level of risk!
Many times business owners will gamble with risk unknowingly. This is where companies like People First and Barbara Flynn can provide you with an understanding of the risks you have not managed and are not aware of. Very often, it’s the things we don’t know we don’t know that get us in the most trouble.
During our most recent podcast we asked Barbara how she helps clients identify risks here’s what she had to say.
“One of the things I always ask, what keeps you up at night?” That starts questions and {…} opens up possibilities.” – Barbara Flynn
Barbara identifies some key principals here by asking this question. Right off the bat, she allows the business owner (always the foremost expert in their own business) to consider what risks they are most concerned with, and it also allows them to ask Barbara what risks other business owners are concerned about. This is one of my personal favorite questions to uncover needs. It’s an open ended question, forces the other party to listen and also open up and become vulnerable. It’s a fantastic opening for any consultant focused on risk mitigating strategies to create some insight into a business owners major paint points.
So….what keeps you up at night? We’d love to hear from you!
For more of the podcast you can listen here.
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