Training and Coaching
> Risk Mitigation and Management
 

Opportunity is rarely unaccompanied by risk. The extent to which a person, group or company can embrace risk is the extent to which it will meet opportunity. At the same time, we all have responsibilities: to management, employees, stockholders, families, the outer world. So we develop comfort zones, with boundaries determined by both inner and outer circumstances: historical experience, the current environment, and our expectations and hopes for the future.

Comfort Zones are where we usually live. Danger Zones are places where business, careers, health and safety are truly at risk. In between are Learning Zones, often far more spacious than we can know from behind the wall. It is here that we can stretch thinking, behavior and business practices. Positive growth therefore requires trust, "safety nets"—contingency plans and management support, and making likely rewards greater than possible losses. This is an important aspect of our own training designs, where safe risks are encouraged in service of personal and corporate expansion.

Some people and companies have comfort zones that extend well into the danger zone, with no buffer. The dot-com implosion occurred when too many trapeze artists found no-one to catch them at the end of a swing, nor safety net beneath. Yet the greatest Opportunity Zones are often found at the edge of the unknown. So we coach expansion balanced by appropriate caution, through a variety of formal and intuitive tools.

 

Contingency Planning: Before - During - After
 

Similar methods are useful in planning and conducting delicate or difficult negotiations, and are also presented in our Sales, Negotiation & Influence Skills trainings.