Sunday 3 June 2012

Goals and risks

I've spent quit a bit of my career as a risk management software developer in the realms of enterprise risk management. You've probably heard a lot about risk management in the news as the financial crisis of the last 5 years was caused mainly by bad risk management and a lack of risk management. In enterprise risk management a lot of time is spent identifying risks and setting up controls on the risks to prevent events and to mitigate the damage of events. Additionally companies spend some time trying to analyse the impact of these risks and the likelihood: time not well spent (in my opinion) unless you have access to the mountains of actuarial data that insurance companies have.

What has this got to do with goals? Well goals are things you want to do, have, be, achieve, see, experience and so on, while risks are things you don't want to have, experience, suffer. Risks are simply anti-goals :) Anti-goals are useful because they tell us what we don't want. How many times have you told yourself "I never want to be like that...", "I never want to go through that...", "I never want to do that...". At the heart of what I call personal risk, is the desire to avoid some outcome. At the heart of risk management is the desire to avoid some event. Risk management would identify controls that can be put in place to avoid or mitigate risks.

When I identify personal risks, I also identify the positive outcome I would rather have. For a few years of my life while my marriage was breaking apart I focused on bad things and bad outcomes and they tended to become real. For about 3 years, a lot of horrible things just happened in my life. I believe that what you focus on becomes real: "As a man thinketh in his heart", so is he (Proverbs 23: 7). This has been my experience, so lately when I think "I don't want to be overweight" (just an example :)) I change my thought to what I want instead: "I want to be healthy, fit and good-looking". That way I can identify steps I can take to achieve the goal rather than just focus on what I don't want. Focusing on what you don't want is like walking backwards with your origin in sight and not being able to see your destination: you never know where you are going in life and probably end up right back where you started, at the place you wanted to avoid.

So personal risks, or anti-goals should be identified, but then overridden with more positive statements about what you want. In fact, emotionally it may be well to keep both your goal and anti-goal in mind as this will help you to strive for your goal while avoiding the risk. Keeping both in mind will help you leverage off your emotions to get what you desire while avoiding what you don't. It's much like asking yourself "how will I feel if I achieve this goal?" and "how will I feel if this risk takes place?" Let those feelings drive you to create a goal that motivates you to succeed.

Goals stated in this way should create a compelling force that will drive you to achieve them, and give you a fantastic reason to celebrate when you do.

No comments:

Post a Comment