The current pandemic makes me think about risk and how we see risks personally. I already wrote before in a blog about the question I got for my exam at the end of my studies as a Project Manager. The topic was ‘risk’. My elaboration contained what we had to know and learn but I also took the risk to share my opinion. My answers were of the kind that I ended as the best student of my year.
The way I experience taking risks since that moment as an entrepreneur and a manager did change year after year. I am willing to put the bar always higher, however taking the ‘risk’ factor of every project & even every action into account. Do I take more risk? That is a good question!
I have been in many different situations and confronted with many possible outcomes in my career.
I think I became better in evaluating the possible risks. Realizing that some risk you see when you have less experience are not really risks but only your own uncertainty. You become the risk almost.
Covid-19 is putting all this in a new perspective. Politicians are taking decisions based upon the risk scientist see. But most possibly they also think about their own careers and are willing, just as we all do, to take some risks to bring our careers to the level we dream about as fast and successful as possible. And they might also be anxious as they have never met this decision taking before.
We educate our children with the idea of risks, wat can they do and what cannot, but when you are anxious yourself you might be to overprotective for your children and teach them something else about risk than your neighbors. Fearing the deep blue see, being scared to talk to new people, fearing spiders, being scared to lose a game, fearing many things has a link with how willing you are to take risks and with the outcome and the lesson’s learned afterwards.
After every project and action, you need to take the time to think about the lesson’s learned, this is very often forgotten as we do not have the time or budget to reflect. A pity.
But I know that after I found myself doing crazy things, maybe with some risks, my brain remembers the great feeling and not the risk. So, I would just do it again.
The actual pandemic will not stop me from being my own rebel crazy self, disrupting the status quo. But I just put another thing called ‘Corona’ on my list to check before I take the risk.
