Rethinking Risk

Thrive Author as Risk Seeking Secret Ninja, 2012

Although the computer and high tech industry does tend to have much youth, the world of the CEO is still largely dominated by the over-forty set. Generally, these individuals are in their fifties and sometimes we use terms like “power years.” When Forbes profiled the 71 most powerful people in the world, only twelve of these were under forty years-old (and all male by the way). Yahoo recently named a new CEO, Marissa Mayer, a 37 year-old woman. Interestingly, Mayer ascribes risk as being a part of her best decisions and important in leading to her great success.

In this changing Great Recession Era, the meaning of risk is different for those individuals whose earnings are less than that level of the very rich levels of income below those in CEO offices. Although for many, it may now seem like ancient history, a job with one of the giants of American business, such as General Motors or IBM or any number of Fortune 500 companies, once signified low risk.  Good pay, regular raises, health insurance, and a retirement plan seemed secure. Those days are now long gone with no signs of return.

Each of us varies along a continuum in one’s attitude toward risk. This can be conceptualized as risk seeking, risk acceptance, to risk avoidance. If we are at either extreme of risk seeking or risk avoidance, we probably already know well that characteristic. Think of risk acceptance as living somewhere in the middle between these two extremes. While not seeking out risk, this person realizes that some level of risk is simply a normal fact of life. He or she chooses to not be overly worried by possible unpleasant futures.

These times must be particularly difficult for those who live at the extreme of risk avoidance or risk aversion. In the world of work, one has to wonder if there is truly any such thing as a secure position today. What position is not at possible risk for downsizing, outsourcing, eliminating the need for a person due to technological advances, or elimination due to increasing of efficiency? Recall that these eliminations started long ago with the blue collar worker, with jobs moving to international locales. When this began in the 1970’s and 1980’s, who would have dreamed at that time that the white collar jobs of accountants and engineers and others, would decades later follow a similar pattern. Even a highly trained service-oriented job as a physician is not safe from the effects of globalization in our uncertain future.

The changing economic landscape of our country means that if one’s personal tendency is toward risk avoidance or aversion, then much worry might seem unavoidable.  I would challenge the reader prone to risk aversion to contemplate whether or not some movement toward risk acceptance is in order. Leahy (2003) points out that many persons who worry a great deal believe that they can prevent bad things from happening. In reality though, we often simply cannot prevent every bad thing from happening. When we do worry about the potential problems of life that we cannot control, are we really helping ourselves in any real way?

Leahy (2003) suggests an exercise in “Practicing Acceptance.” The exercise amounts to first identifying what it is exactly that you are worried about. Next, identify and list the costs and benefits of acceptance.  Then, identify those things which may be unpleasant but that you accept them. Finally, reflect upon what is actually causing you to worry versus accept.

While worrying itself can be unpleasant and may lead to a multitude of difficulties, perhaps the greatest one of the greatest costs is that it can be so utterly paralyzing. While some level of worries about the economy and one’s personal economic future is almost inevitable, I have been able to come to a good level of risk acceptance when it comes to the world of work. Being able to reach that point to a large extent, came from my own observations of the many unfortunate circumstances of my own father. My father endured a long period of unemployment and underemployment during the time of his early married life and while I was an infant. This period was long before I am able to personally remember, but I have heard the family stories of those difficult years. As an older child, our family enjoyed the fruits of my father’s stable employment as a laborer in a union box-making factory.

His period of unemployment and underemployment was however a tremendous factor that led him to remain in a job for over twenty-five years for which he was markedly over-qualified, and to not explore other paths which would have likely been more suited to his interests and within a few years likely much more financially lucrative. He had completed training in electronics, television and radio repair, and had become a licensed electrician. What he had with the factory job though seemed stable and secure, and he was not about to risk losing that. On the continuum of how one responds to risk, he clearly fell on the side of risk avoidance.

In retrospect though, that security was really an illusion. As the company downsized, he felt safe because he was within the ten highest seniority persons. The factory would quite literally have to close before he was impacted. Sadly though, that safety was an illusion as the factory did ultimately close in 1988. Further, my father was one of seemingly above average rates of deaths from various cancers among his co-workers in their 50’s and early 60’s. Although we will never know, my mother has long suspected the exposure to various chemicals of the factory were to blame. I tend to concur.

How was my own approach to risk in work and career influenced by all of this? First, early on, I understood that risk avoidance was itself not equivalent to safety. Job security, in my mind, has always been an illusion…long before it became as clearly an illusion as it is now in the twenty-first century. Upon completion of Graduate School, I made the difficult decision to leave my home State of Indiana to move to the northern part of Michigan for my early psychology job experience. Later in my career, I chose to leave a secure full-time job for the less predictable pay as a contractual psychotherapist. In the former, I received the same salary every two weeks, like clockwork. In the later, I received a larger hourly rate but without the predictability. If I did a good job and my clients kept their appointments, I made a great paycheck. In weeks of fewer clients, my checks were lower. In the end, the risky choice paid off for me. I can also look back on my career related decisions and recognize that many of those decisions was a very conscious effort to try to stay in control of my future rather than being swept away in the currents of change.  

While risk aversion as discussed above must have been a tremendous factor for my father, I imagine that the difficulty of simply envisioning something different must have also been a factor. Until he had no other choice, could my father even fathom a work life other than the daily grind of a factory? I’m not sure that he could. After the factory where my father worked did close, he did find work after several difficult months of searching (as he was in his 50’s at that time). He accepted a position as an electrician. He enjoyed his new work immensely. He continued in that position for about six years, before his untimely death due to cancer. I can’t help but wonder if he would have been happier if he had been able to make that risky leap to an electrician job earlier in life.  However, I do take some comfort in knowing that he did finally work at something which he truly enjoyed.

My own natural tendency does lean like my father though toward risk aversion. I accept that as a part of my personality that I am probably never going to be an active risk seeker. However, I have consciously made the effort to move toward the middle to be acceptant of risk. I spend time consciously thinking about what else I might do. I really do not wish to reach a point where I look at what I do and conclude that this describes all that I am willing to do, can do, or am capable of doing. I strive to continually try to envision various twists and applications of what I do as a trade. As people, we often cling to ideas that may have been beneficial in the past, but no longer work today. Sometimes this is out of risk aversion.

When we consider risk as a continuum, perhaps we would be wise to reflect on the fact that like with so many traits or characteristics, that at the extremes there are sometimes great rewards and sometimes great benefits. Marissa Mayer is a perfect example of the great rewards that are sometimes possible for those who seek out risk. There are similarly tales of great loss at the extremes of risk taking. At the extreme of risk aversion though, we must remember that aversion does not in reality always equal safety. Bad things can still happen, even to the risk aversive; plus the extreme patterns of worrying that so often accompany this aversion can zap much of the joy out of life. Perhaps this is the greatest reason to consider a conscious effort to make movement toward risk acceptance.

Reference

Leahy, R. (2003). Cogntive Therapy Techniques: A Practitioner’s Guide. New York: The Guilford Press.