Editor’s note: Caspar Berry is the opening keynote speaker at the GRC Conference 2020, a virtual event to take place 17-19 August. After starting his working life as an actor in BBC drama Byker Grove alongside Ant and Dec, Berry studied economics at Cambridge before making the decision to move to Las Vegas and become a professional poker player. Now a veteran of over 2,000 speeches in 30 countries, Berry uses these unique experiences to deliver challenging messages about risk-taking and decision-making to maximize returns in an increasingly uncertain world. Read Berry’s thoughts below on how people can shift a risk-averse mentality, and listen to more of his insights in this recent ISACA Podcast episode.
If somebody is naturally risk-averse, how difficult is it for them to change that mentality? There is lots to say here, starting with perhaps a more fundamental question, which is whether the person should change his or her mentality. One of the things that sets me apart from a lot of – let’s use the phrase “motivational speakers” – is that I don't think fear of failure is a bad thing, per se. There are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that a healthy fear of failure will keep you from doing stupid, dangerous and reckless things. Indeed, it will keep you alive.
Going deeper though, a simple analysis of the phrase “fear of failure” shows it to be nothing more than a colloquial term for “loss aversion” or “aversion to loss”… or “aversion to failure.” Fear of failure is actually an aspect of your psychology that is literally going to drive you toward success!
Where fear of failure is a bad thing is in circumstances where it acts as an obstacle to the achievement of long term goals, and there’s no doubt that this is not an uncommon symptom or real-world effect of fear of failure because the achievement of demanding long-term goals often requires the execution of short-term actions which might, conceivably, result in failure. To give a somewhat flippant but actually quite real example: to create a relationship with the partner of your dreams, you first have to take a leap of faith and ask them out … something which might well end in failure.
I think interestingly most people are relatively aligned with this reality in their personal lives. What I mean by that is that most people, most of the time, accept that not being prepared to take risks can prevent them from the achievement of some long-term goals. Yes, they might be able to make positive changes by being prepared to take more risk … but they will also have to take more risk! And so, they’re happy with their unhappiness. I certainly have never felt comfortable doing anything more than presenting the case for this behavior change. The desire to change has to come from within: to quote the old joke… the light bulb has to want to change.
What changes the context of this radically is when we move out of the realm of the personal and into the professional business-centered environment. In private companies, individual decision-makers have an obligation to team leaders and ultimately to owners to make profit-maximizing decisions. And in public companies, that obligation is legally mandated. In these situations, it is much more important for us to ask how we can change our mentality not just of individuals ultimately, but of whole teams. And the first problem that we encounter in this situation Is the problem of genetics.
I have read enough to believe that certainly with reference to decision-making we are at least in part a product of our genetic makeup. There are genes associated with our propensity to seek new adventure and experiences, and the good news for many people reading this is that the US population has high repetitions of these genes in the gene pool by virtue of being descended from people who traveled long distances to seek a new life in America.
With this said, it must be – and it is – possible to change our behaviors, habits and actions. The first step to doing this is to simply consider the consequences of our actions. Figures vary, but there's no doubt that a very large proportion of the decisions that we make every day are made within the realm of habit that is largely unconscious and unconsidered, so just by elevating these into the decision-making mind it is possible for us to at least open the door to change.
The next step Is to move the consideration of these issues out of the emotional mind and into the conscious mind. Minds that are tired or hungry or stressed will often consider issues in what we understand and called the limbic brain where the “fight or flight” or “fearful” response is usually the first one. Literally elevating the analysis of such decisions into the frontal cortex and thinking about them rationally within the context of what we want and what is most likely to happen is a great first step. Yes, the consequences of somethings may of course be terrible, but how likely are they, really?
Ultimately, though the decisions that we make are a function of the timeframe within which we consider those decisions, so here are three very simple techniques in the form of challenges that we can make to ourselves that can genuinely change the decision that we take.
The first is what a poker player does. When we’re in a situation where we cannot possibly know exactly what the outcome of this particular decision is going to be, we have to think in aggregate terms: what if we were to do this 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 times? Given each actual result will be different, what will be the average result or net effect, of this action?
Sometimes we lose; sometimes we win. Will we make or lose money, and even if we make money, is our return on investment great enough to justify the very real potential for downside loss on this occasion?
The second tool is actually stolen from the book 10 10 10 ten by Suzy Welch (daughter of Jack), in which she quite simply asks the decision-maker to consider the consequences of the decision in (and it doesn’t really matter what you choose, but let’s say) 10 days, 10 months and 10 years. By simply forcing us to think about the future, we may very well decide to take a different decision now in the present. The benefit of doing this is that most of the effect of this decision, particularly in big decisions, will unfold in the future, so thinking about this future over the different timeframes is crucial to considering whether or not we want to experience those outcomes. It may well be that taking an easy option now is good for the first 10 minutes or 10 days but over the course of 10 months or 10 years, this pattern of interaction starts to look more flawed.
This very specific analysis leads to the third tool, which is to ask the question “What if I never…?”
Most of the time whether or not we do something is couched in a binary opposition between “the act of doing” and “the act of not doing it,” and when viewed in such terms, “not doing” is almost always going to look and feel like the easier option. If you don’t do something, you can’t fail at it!
However, what if you never do it? What if you never write that book or ask that person out or update your inventory … what will your life look like then in 10 hours, 10 months or 10 years? Using these latter two tools in conjunction with one another forces us to think about the future – specifically a future where we don’t take any risk. This is very likely to encourage us to take more.