There is nothing wrong with risk aversion.
It is only aversion to reasonable business risk that is a problem. When a business leader complains of excessive risk aversion in his staff, the underlying concerns are frequently personal. Continue reading
Category Archives: Risks
No Path to Excellence in Market Price
Saving pennies should never justify forgoing dollars of income.
The most successful business people I know never consider cost, and only consider ROI, particularly when hiring people and engaging services.
There is no path to excellence through paying market price. A consistent ROI focus results in rapid growth and success.
Be Unfair and Play Favorites
Fairness is not about equity of treatment. It is about equity of opportunity to exercise one’s talents. You can play favorites and there is nothing wrong with doing so, as long as it is the excellent that you favor.
Presume the Best in People: The Gains Far Exceed the Losses
Recently, when traveling first class on the Shinkansen (the Green Car), I noticed that conductors no longer check passengers tickets. It used to be that uniformed conductor, often female, would first distribute complimentary disposable wet towels to new passengers who had just boarded, noting their seat numbers, and then some minutes later return to the same seats to inspect tickets. Now they just distribute towels. No one checks the tickets. Continue reading
Stop focusing on the yen exchange rate! Your best hedge is innovation!
Many business executives are fretting about the weakening, and a lot of them were present at a yen forecast briefing I attended yesterday. Lots of charts and graphs, elaborate assumptions, and caveats. In the end, it boils down to the yen could up, or then again it could go down. Continue reading