CHAPTER 7

Steer Left. Turn Right.

I remember the day my colleagues at work all came to see me. One by one, they had learned I was taking up motorcycling, and finally they decided they needed to do an intervention of sorts. As a group they walked in to figure out what in the world I was up to and hopefully, talk me out of it.

“Do you know how dangerous that is?”

“Are you wearing a helmet?”

“You’re taking a safety course, aren’t you?”

And then someone voiced what was on all of their minds:

“What if something happens to you? What will happen to us?”

And all along I’d been thinking they were concerned about me.

“Well, that, too,” they said.

I got it, of course. They loved me and cared about me. They didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. But they didn’t really understand my drive to ride. They’re not the first ones.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson, a passionate biker and author of The Perfect Vehicle, believes you can divide the world into two groups: “Those who do, those who don’t; those who would love to, those who would never dream of it if they had all eternity. See how fast the two halves split and fall away when you mention you ride a motorcycle. Side one: Really? Oh, I’ve always wanted to ride one! Side two: Really? It’s so dangerous.”

My colleagues at work were simply in the latter camp, and I knew I needed to help them understand why the risk was worth it to me.

People who ride motorcycles, of course, are well aware of the dangers. Trust me. We all understand the risks associated with flying down the highway with little more than a helmet and some leather to protect us from a close encounter with the pavement. As we soak in the beauty of the surroundings, we’re always looking out for the things that easily could take us into a slide—things you don’t think about when driving on four wheels.

Pierson has a list: “wet leaves, gravel, sand, decreasing-radius turns, painted lines, tar patches liquefying in the sun, antifreeze, oil deposits at gas stations or toll booths, metal plates and manhole covers made deadly by rain, a beam falling from the back of a truck, heavy wind on a bridge. Or a greater hazard than these, which waits in primal innocence for a rear tire to send sideways in a blur: horse manure.” When you’re on a motorcycle, risks are around every corner.

Motorcyclists know we have to identify and manage the risks if we’re going to enjoy our journey and make it successfully, and safely, to our destination. But we embrace the risks. If we totally avoid them, we’ll get much less from the experience and never reach some pretty fabulous places. This is something my team has come to understand about me over time and why I love to ride.

It’s part of the thrill of why I ride. It’s risky. But it’s rewarding, like becoming a parent, or being an entrepreneur, or leading a team. Yes, this is another way riding a motorcycle is very much like leadership. You can’t fully enjoy the rewards if you aren’t willing to take some risks.

Unfortunately, too many leaders I see are unwilling to metaphorically jump on the bike and feel the wind in their faces, because all they see are the risks. So they don’t go very far and neither do the people they lead. They end up limiting their destinations, and they don’t experience the joy of the journey.

Others set up themselves and their organizations to take advantage of opportunities largely because they’ve learned how to embrace the challenging but exhilarating risks in life.

Frankly, I’ve come to believe one of the most dangerous risks any modern leader can take is to embrace the status quo. Leaders who aren’t innovating, in fact, are risking everything. They just don’t realize it. But here’s the reality: We work in a constantly evolving business environment, and the competition isn’t sitting still. And that competition is all around us. Indeed, the competition might not be from our industry. It might even be a start-up some teenager is launching from her parent’s garage.

Consider how companies like Uber disrupted the taxi industry, or how Redbox and Netflix shook up home movie rentals. Or look at a snapshot of the camera industry. Kodak, for decades one of the world’s most recognized brands, actually invented the first digital camera in 1975, but didn’t market the new technology. Why? It didn’t want to cannibalize its dominance in the film business. By the time it joined the digital revolution, it found itself chasing Sony and Canon.

Avi Dan, a contributor to Forbes, points out that Kodak made the classic mistake of not asking the right questions. Thus it focused on marketing and selling products rather than remembering that it was in the storytelling business not the film business.

“When Kodak decided to get in the game it was too late,” Dan writes. “The company saw its market share decline, as digital imaging became dominant. . . . Kodak failed to adapt to a new marketplace and new consumer attitudes.”¹

Risk is essential for every leader in every industry. Risk takes you into the future and helps ensure your company remains relevant even while everything around you is changing. Daunting, yes. But here’s the good news: taking risks is a perfect fit for anyone looking to merge destination leadership with a journey mindset. Destination leadership drives you toward risk because you know it’s the only way to reach any worthy goal. A journey mindset frees you to enjoy the experience, regardless of the uncertainty. You don’t have to know if everything will work. You’re even OK with some failure, because you know you can learn from those experiences, and ultimately those failures lead to progress. The conflict between destination leadership and a journey mindset is actually an illusion, because merging the two is the best way to drive forward.

The thing about risk is that it often requires a counterintuitive approach, much like navigating a motorcycle. Not only do you have to “look through the turn,” but you have to deftly employ something called countersteering: as you approach a turn, you briefly turn the bike in the opposite direction of the way you want to go to initiate and complement your lean.

The physics of this are complicated. They involve camber thrust, roll angle, and centripetal force. But the reality of it is simple: if you are driving down the road and push the handlebar with your right hand, the bike will lean to the right, allowing you to negotiate a right-hand turn.

Think “Steer left. Turn right.” It’s counterintuitive, but it’s the key to riding through the turn and maneuvering a 500-pound bike to take you forward. So you have to free yourself of your fears and take the risk.

An Opportunity Mentality

Risk is risky because it takes time and money, which are always in short supply. It requires us to look outside of our industry, outside of our comfort zones, and away from the “urgent” business needs of the day. It asks us to fix what’s sometimes not broken (yet) or acknowledge that our products, processes, and solutions might not be good enough for the future. It challenges us to face our fear of failure. And it’s just downright uncomfortable.

All of those reasons for avoiding risks amount to one thing: an excuse for keeping the bike parked in the garage. Whenever I’ve given in to the temptations and excuses that squash risk, it’s always held me and my company back. For example, on some occasions we’ve passed on making strategic hires that might have helped us start up a new service area better or faster than we could do on our own. In hindsight I could see it would have been smarter to take the risk. Only when we were willing to think and act counterintuitively—when we were willing to steer left to turn right—were we able to find new destinations and truly enjoy our journey.

A good friend of mine, Kara Trott, is the CEO of Quantum Health, a company that has become a disruptive force in the health care benefits industry largely because Kara has learned to embrace risks and innovate while others around her are content with staying parked in their garages. Some sectors of health care are highly innovative, but the benefits sector isn’t one of them. In fact, Kara says it actually has a “bias against innovation.” It’s dominated by a few very large insurance providers who focus primarily on things like payment methodology and operational efficiencies rather than the patient’s experience and journey.

“Their interest is in maintaining the status quo,” Kara told me. “At their core, they’re transactional machines. Operational efficiency is their model. Taking risks tends to muck up the works.”

Quantum Health innovates by finding ways to relate to health care’s ultimate customers: the patients and their families. But in an industry that avoids risks, this has taken patience on Kara’s part and a commitment to sticking with a counterintuitive approach.

That’s not easy. Kara has what I call an “opportunity mentality” that’s common among leaders who embrace risks and pursue risk. You don’t have to be a thrill-seeker or an adrenalin junky to take risks and innovate, but you do have to discover the freedom that comes with taking responsible chances that will allow you to grow as a leader and position you and your organization for success.

Leaders with an opportunity mentality create organizations with an opportunity mentality. When organizations operate with an opportunity mentality, they create a culture that turns risks into rewards. So let’s look at some ways leaders can discover and embrace this approach.

First, Unlock Your Limits

One of the biggest reasons leaders don’t take risks is that they become prisoners of their perceived limitations.

For instance, many leaders too often see innovation as something that mainly happens with technology or science. But no matter what industry or business you’re in, you can try new things with products, services, proprietary processes, or methodologies. You can also change how you do business—finance, team structures, accessibility, and engagement styles. It’s not just launching a new capability. Think about the way you serve clients or how you manage workflow or how your teams are structured; any ideas that enhance your organization’s ability to cut costs, drive revenue, or grow net income are chances to innovate.

Many people are also prone to see risk as expensive—something only possible for organizations with big research and development budgets. However, when you look around the world, historically and currently, you see that necessity, curiosity, courage, and persistence are what really drive new thinking.

I was at a conference in Chicago where one of the speakers was Navi Radjou, a coauthor of Jugaad Innovation and Frugal Innovation. Those two books describe how to take smart risks and make use of available resources to drive change. Radjou says a jugaad is an “innovative fix or simple work-around.” Innovation is not about how many resources you have, he says, but how resourceful you are with what you have. I couldn’t agree more.

You also need to embrace risk as your job. It’s up to you as a leader to think about the potential of your business, not just what it looks like today. When you’re too busy working in the business, you’re not working on it. The more you can lift your head up from your work and look over the horizon, the more astute you become at connecting the dots and finding opportunity. This is an essential skill of a leader: it’s “looking through the turn” at its finest. Obviously you get better with practice.

Second, Stay Loose

Whenever you commit to taking risks, you will encounter unexpected bumps and changes in the road. When that happens during a motorcycle ride, I can’t stiffen up or I’ll risk losing control of my bike. The same is true as a leader. We have to expect the unexpected, be ready to go with it when it happens, stay loose, and make adjustments to keep moving forward.

When something comes along that’s a threat to the business—a new competitor or a low-cost alternative—a first instinct is to wave it off, dismiss it, or stiff-arm it. However, rather than wasting time and energy defending the threat, it sometimes can be better to take a counterintuitive approach and figure out how to leverage the threat to your benefit. You might find ways to work with the competitor or develop new products or solutions that build off the low-cost alternative.

I’ve found the key to staying loose when navigating risks is to take the time to listen to my intuition. This isn’t easy for a results-driven person like myself, because it requires slowing down and focusing on things other than the pressing issue of the day, like the changing colors of the trees on a fall ride or the fog silently floating above a river on a morning run. These moments help you clear your head and free you to see things in ways you otherwise couldn’t.

Carl Honoré, the author of In Praise of Slowness, put it this way: “Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you’re juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5 P.M. deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high-stress meeting. They come when you’re walking the dog, soaking in the bath, or swinging in a hammock.”²

Third, Create a Culture of Try

Trust me, your team and your clients want you to try new things. Employees are empowered by a “let’s do it” mentality. Customers and clients want to know you can take them places they’ve never been and can’t get to on their own.

Leaders need to create a “greenhouse” environment that encourages teams to try new things and see what works without fear of punishment or embarrassment if it fails. Ultimately, you want a culture that’s not afraid to fail—it’s afraid not to try. This is part attitude, of course, but it’s also part process.

In other words, leaders first have to inspire people to try new things, encouraging them on the front end and rewarding effort regardless of the outcomes. That doesn’t mean all failures are “OK,” but employees should have a clear vision for what’s acceptable and what’s not so they aren’t walking on eggshells.

One way to create a culture of try is to ask yourself and your team “how might we” questions. Each word in that phrase is important. I’m a big fan of leading through asking rather than always telling, and I particularly like this simple but powerful approach for creative problem-solving developed by Warren Berger.³ You can open your mind to possibilities by starting the conversation in this way. The “how” part assumes there are solutions out there, and it gives creative confidence to the group—yes, we can find an answer. “Might” says we can put ideas out there that might or might not work, but either is okay when we are in brainstorming mode. Of course, the “we” is that we are going to figure it out together.

You can also put into place some simple processes that will enable and empower employees to try new ideas. The Design Council’s Double Diamond⁴ is a practical model used by industries and companies around the world. It involves four steps: discover, define, develop, and deliver.

In the early part of ideation, teams think broadly during the discovery phase, clarifying what the issues and opportunities are. They bring it back to a definition, identify what they’re solving for, and establish a design brief. Then the process goes back outward again for development of ideas, coming back to a close at the delivery stage. The finished concept can be tested and possibly recycled around the diamond once again. It’s not only a design process, but a model for improvement.

The hardest part of the Double Diamond model? Getting your team to “turn the corner”: to stop brainstorming and start refining and deciding on the final product. But good leaders know how to take ideas from concept to execution, getting things across the finish line.

A culture of try, however, also needs a process that sets teams up for success and helps them mitigate failure. For instance, you can establish an in-house “labs” initiative or work closely with a local accelerator or start-up incubator to get access to entrepreneurs who are creating new things. This provides a safe, formal structure for exploring and taking risks, and it sends a message that taking risks is encouraged and rewarded.

A study in 2015 by the Altimeter Group looked at 200 large companies and found that 38 percent had set up innovation centers, mostly in Silicon Valley, with the goal of “leveraging the ecosystem of start-ups, venture capitalists, accelerators, vendors, and academic institutions that these hubs provide.”⁵ While most of these centers focus on technology, they also focus heavily on understanding the needs, expectations, and behaviors of customers.

This might seem like an out-of-reach idea for smaller organizations, but any group can establish a “lab,” especially by partnering with others who are interested in figuring out the future together. For instance, I’ve been a part of a local angel investor community that listens and gives feedback to entrepreneurs who are pitching their business for funding. From that group, many more seasoned leaders have begun mentoring these new CEOs on how to grow their companies. In exchange, they give us a window into their thinking and how they envision changing their industry.

Whatever systems or processes you use, make “test and learn” a part of your culture. Experiment to see what might happen. Run parallel pilots of your most viable options. David Maister, a widely respected consultant’s consultant and former professor at Harvard Business School, points out that, “Innovation wins through its portfolio of experiments, not by being super-geniuses at spotting in advance the one that is going to work. So you need to stimulate a large number of experiments.”⁶

If this is all new to your culture, start with small innovation projects that have a chance to pay off early—small-scale, quick payback projects. Getting early wins will help build the confidence, change the culture, and over time, create a larger and longer-lasting impact.

Approaching risks with the right mindset is the first piece of creating an environment where innovation can flourish. It takes courage to steer left to turn right, because it feels counterintuitive. But we have to free our mind of that fear if we want to make the turn and move toward our destination.

Once we do, however, we still have to make some critical decisions like “What risks should we take?” and “How do we successfully manage them?” Although we need to be willing to take risks to innovate and grow, not all risks are created equal. When we come to the fork in the road, we need to make a wise decision about which path to take.