Avoid “Inverting The Risk Continuum”

What does that mean?

“Inverting the risk continuum” is when you — either individual you or work team you — spends a huge amount of time on relatively low-impact, low-risk decisions.

Consider this example:

Inverting the risk continuum can lead a company to lose focus of core business questions. I recently spoke to a group of leaders whose company had made a significant acquisition, one that doubled the company’s size. When I asked them to write down the most important decision they were making at that moment, 180 out of 200 said they were making a staffing decision.

Two funny things about that quote:

1. It’s not actually meant to imply hiring isn’t important. But if you’re in the middle of a huge acquisition, that could make/break a five-year span for your company, you really shouldn’t be overly-focused on staffing at that point — and yet 90% were.
2. I’d actually bet the number of people who knew what they should be focused on was incredibly low. Priority management is horrible at companies. Most of those…