We often judge opportunities based on the potential benefit or “up side” as it’s often called. If we do ‘X’ we get ‘Y’. Typically the risk we consider is simply not getting ‘Y’ if we fail to accomplish ‘X’.
I’ve come to rely on an additional approach to judging both opportunity and risk. I call it the “cost of failure”.
It’s quick, easy, and now one of my most important evaluation tools.
The moderator of one of the groups of which I’m a member posed the following (paraphrased) question:
“If you had a chance to send a message to 20,000 people in 100 words or less, what would you say?”
Took me about a second to come up with a two word response:
Back. Up.
There. 98 words to spare. (99 if I’d chosen “backup” instead. 🙂 )
One of my hats is as the curator of the Not All News Is Bad web site and mailing list. Each day I post one positive story gleaned from recent news.
The criteria are rather simple: besides being relatively recent, the story should be something that most would agree is good news. At a more practical level it needs to make me smile.
The concept of “free speech” is more complex than most people realize. It’s much more than being allowed to say whatever you want.
Many people simply get that wrong.