500 Words a Week - Risk
“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.” – Charles Darwin
I recently finished General Stanley McChrystal’s book on risk. From which I got some good takeaways, but I believe I got more takeaways thinking about the process of reading.
How do we define risk? If we google it, we get a selection of definitions all centering around the premise of “the possibility that something unpleasant or unwelcome will happen”. General Stanley encourages us to think the following: “Risk is threat times vulnerability. But we’re not good at predicting threats while we have agency over our vulnerabilities”. How do we detect our vulnerabilities? With regards to work or projects, red teaming is a good concept highlighted in the book.
Red teaming is a process used where a group plays the role of an enemy or competitor and thus tries to break down the plan/ system already put in place. This performed in a safe environment I feel is a good solution to help protect against risk. Extra emphasis on safe environment. We aren’t trying to diagnosis the threat during red teaming, we are looking for vulnerabilities in the system. (“Hard on the issue, soft on the person” – Henry Cloud). Something important to note is the difference between criticism for the sake of criticism, and positive criticism. The age of zoom/ teams meetings has highlighted this even more so, where people feel to the need to say something just to feel heard.
Interestingly, the UK Ministry of Defence has a free Red Teaming Handbook.
General Stanley discusses 10 risk control factors, while each is described with personal anecdotes and other stories, the sheer amount of factors is slightly overwhelming. The one that I felt most relevant and actionable is communication. For me, the number one problem to good communication is assuming. Assuming someone else will tell a person the plan, assuming the people already know what’s going on. Everyone knows the old saying about assuming…
These factors that are proposed are all influenced and controlled by good leadership.
A point that I’ve thought about with regards to reading, is how often do we labour through a book when not enjoying it or feel we have already gotten the most out of it. We have become obsessed with completion, how often have you sat through a movie you weren’t enjoying, how often have you finished a drink or meal for the sake of finishing it. Be ruthless with what you read. We must change our thinking from consuming and completion to understanding, savouring and enjoying. Rather than constantly moving onto the next book, when we come across one we really enjoy we should seek to understand it as much as possible. I’ve been incredibly guilty of just passively reading books at times, then when asked what it’s about or what I got from it, I struggle to answer these questions.
“Life is too short to read a bad book” – James Joyce
