The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "Managing Risk in Times of Change".

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Managing Risk in Times of Change
Change Management
MTL Course Topics
Managing Risk in Times of Change
CHANGE MANAGEMENT

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Managing Risk in Times of Change
Change Management
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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Managing Risk in Times of Change
Change Management
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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Change Management
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INTRODUCTION
We all like to feel safe. Whether physically or
psychologically, a feeling of safety and security protects us
from a potentially hostile world. But we do not grow if we
stay inside our safety zones. Instead of protecting us from
the outside, we become prisoners behind our own walls.
Managing risk is a way to move out from behind the barriers
and take advantage of the opportunities which change
affords.

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FROM COMFORT TO RISK
Too much comfort is as unhealthy for personal growth as
too much risk. Excessive concern for what might happen to
us leads to fear and paralysis; too much reckless risk leads to
unnecessary exposure to danger.
Taking calculated risks and moving gradually from our
comfort zones into risk zones maintains a sensible balance
between the two.
Once the risk has been fully met, and you have accustomed
yourself to the new approach, the old comfort zone has
expanded. You then have a new expanded comfort zone
from which you can take further risks.
"Why not go out on a limb? That's where the best fruit is."
(Old proverb)

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IF YOU TAKE RISKS...
There are two pre-conditions for managing risks:
1. Don't take any risk until you have calculated the very
worst that could happen to you if it should fail and
assured yourself that you could live with the
consequences.
2. Be prepared to abandon a risk if it is obvious that it is
not working.
"If you're losing a tug-of-war with a tiger, give him the rope
before he gets to your arm. You can always get another
rope." (Indian proverb)
Managing risks is about being smart, not foolhardy.
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature
nor do the children of man as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright
exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To
keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strengths undefeatable.” (Helen
Keller)

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MANAGING RISK
There are seven essential steps in managing risk...
1. recognise that nothing can change unless you change
yourself
2. let go of old positions and your emotional attachment to
them
3. think like a new start again
4. be willing to re-invent your identity of who you are
5. manage your own morale through the difficulties of
change
6. find a way to step back from your situation and see
yourself objectively
7. be willing to fail before you succeed.
"All good fortune is a gift of the gods and you don't win the
favour of the gods by being good but by being bold." (Anita
Brookner)

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STICKING TO THE TRIED & TESTED
The instinct to stick with the tried and tested lies deep
within us and often prevents us from willingly doing
something new.
“We all like to give the impression that we embrace change
and that we live for things that are new and different. But
when it comes down to decision time, most of us stick to a
very short list of comfortable situations that define what’s
called our “comfort zone”.
Think about it. How many different restaurants or auto
repair shops do you go to? If you check the local phone
directory, there are probably pages of restaurants and auto
repair shops. But we stick with the few that we’ve tried
before. You can say the same thing with your daily
commute; you stick with the route you’re most familiar and
comfortable with.” (Jim Turner)

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CHANGING FROM THE INSIDE
Static positions give us a sense of security but it is often a
false sense of security.
Bryn had fallen out with her boss over a trivial matter but
had turned it into a power struggle. Her boss did likewise.
Very soon Bryn and her boss were meeting weekly to argue
their respective positions. The more they argued, the more
entrenched they became.
Having exhausted all procedures, arbitrators and mediators,
Bryn went to an old mentor to solicit some final support.
She knew the truth of her mentor's words. "In every
stalemate you have three choices: to change the situation;
to accept the situation; to change yourself. Since you cannot
change the situation and you are unwilling to accept the
situation, you need to change yourself."

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DON’T CHANGE, EXPERIMENT
Most people and certainly most organisations have an in-
built resistance to change. It sounds too risky, too big a step,
too much of a chasm leap.
However, if you propose that, instead of changing, people
try something new out, you get a different reaction. People
are quite happy to experiment if there is no catch, no burnt
bridges, and a way back. So, instead of introducing a change
as a done deal and meeting resistance, simply say, “this is an
experiment to see if it works better for you. If it does, great,
we’ll keep on doing it. If it doesn’t. then we’ll either modify
it or get rid of it.”
Business consultant, Dale Dauten, observes,
“Experimentation never fails. When you try something and
it turns out to be a lousy idea, you never really go back to
where you started. You learn something. If nothing else, it
makes you appreciate what you were doing before.”

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Change Management
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FIRST CHANGE YOURSELF
When we find ourselves in an unsatisfactory situation, most
of us want to change others before we think of changing
ourselves. But there is no certainty in trying to change
others; the only certainty is that we can change ourselves.
1. Recognise the unhelpful attitudes you have which stand
in the way of progress
2. Look at what you want again
3. Be prepared to let go of attachments to an irrelevant
self-image, eg the need not to lose face
4. Be prepared to re-think your concepts of winning and
losing.
"We can only change others by changing ourselves. No one
can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of
change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot
open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional
appeal." (Marilyn Ferguson)

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CHANGING THE WORLD
If we change by first changing ourselves, we cannot begin to
imagine the affect that change might have on others.
"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I
found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to
change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the
nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the
town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realise the only thing I can change is
myself and suddenly I realise that if, long ago, I had changed
myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family
and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact
could have changed the nation and I could indeed have
changed the world." (An unknown monk, 1100AD)

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LET GO OF OLD POSITIONS
Risks aren't risks if they merely re-confirm the status quo.
To move on, we need to abandon old positions, no matter
how attached we were to them.
When Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union in
the 1980's, he had a number of summit meetings with the
then American President Ronald Reagan. Meetings, such as
these, between the leaders of the two most powerful
countries in the world had been taking place on and off for
years invariably with the same result: entrenchment,
stalemate, the false security of position-taking.
Gorbachev decided to take a risk at his summits. He offered
to begin a one-sided reduction in nuclear weapons. The risk
meant the beginning of an end to the Cold War and with it
unprecedented changes in the course of the world's history.

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THE CUP IS FULL
A "koan" is a story told by Zen Buddhists which contains a
piece of ageless wisdom. This koan is about letting go of old
attachments before we can learn new ways.
Nan-in, a Japanese Zen master, received a visit from a
university professor who wanted to know about zen.
They chatted for a while and then Nan-in poured tea, He
poured his visitor's cup full and continued to pour as the tea
spilled over the sides.
The professor, unable to restrain himself, cried out: "Stop.
The cup is full, no more will go in."
Nan-in replied: "Like this cup, you are full of your own
judgments, speculations, ideas and opinions. How can you
begin to learn until you empty your cup first?"

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THINK LIKE A NOVICE
When we are at the beginning of a new adventure or a new
enterprise, there is a buzz about us.
We've all felt it. Remember the excitement, anticipation and
motivation of starting a new job, a new school, a new
home? It hasn't gone. It's still there, buried beneath familiar
routines, tiredness, habits and cynicism.
Find it again and feel it when you take a new risk.
1. When we start a new venture, our motivation is always
high.
2. When we start a new venture, we have great dreams of
what is possible.
3. When we start a new venture, we want to impress.
"When you're green you grow; when you're ripe, you rot."
(Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's)

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RE-INVENTING
Re-invention is a way of taking risks that re-shapes the
person you once appeared to be. We can re-invent
ourselves each day as well as throughout our careers.
Some well-known people who successfully re-invented
themselves, even late in life, include:
1. Leonard Cheshire, World War Two fighter pilot, who,
after the war, set up homes for the disabled.
2. Brian Rix, actor of farce who became head of the mental
health charity, Mencap.
3. Jack Jones, who led the largest trade union in the UK
and on retirement became a tireless campaigner for
pensioners rights.
"Take a chance! All of life is a chance. The person who goes
furthest is the one willing to do and dare. The "sure-thing"
boat never gets far from shore. (Dale Carnegie)

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RE-INVENTING THE JOB
Each job has its own potential for daring, risk-taking and re-
invention...
1. the shopkeeper who re-designs his window like he's
never done before.
2. the teacher who, faced with the same lesson that she's
given a hundred times before, thinks up a totally new
twist.
3. the doctor who decides to see how his patients feel
when he paints the surgery a soft pink.
4. the restauranteur who invents a brand a new dish.
5. the actress who pushes emotion to a point she's never
done before.
Only in risk-taking is there the potential to discover
something great.
"The definition of "great" is mostly the imagination and zeal
to re-create yourself daily." (Tom Peters)

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LEVERAGE
In an ideal world, the organisation we work for is
supportive, open-minded and valuing. It promotes rather
than stifles creative risk-taking. It gives people space to try
new things rather than imposing sterile controls on them.
Unfortunately, not every organisation is like that. In that
case, risk-takers need to learn how to use leverage.
Leverage is the ability to find some means of carrying out
acceptable change against the tide. It means finding a way
to do things differently and then using this to influence
others to change. It means practising your own leadership
skills of seeing what is possible and then through your own
commitment and enthusiasm creating a ripple effect
elsewhere.
One manager decided to develop important work with her
clients because all her colleagues were too busy "climbing
the corporate ladder" to notice.

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RISK-TAKERS
Gary Hamel, professor of strategic thinking at the London
Business School, says that, in an age when customers can
access instant information about all the products in a
market, continuous re-invention is the only way to maintain
a competitive edge.
Regrettably, however, the skills and experience of risk-taking
do not reside at the top of the organisation. Here thinking
tends to be convergent, people are wanted who will fit in,
and success at having arrived replaces hunger to have a go.
Hamel suggests that organisations need to find and nurture
the risk-takers. One organisation actually sets out to recruit
people who will be "awkward".
Risk-takers need to be both visionaries and activists. The
organisation needs to turn from being a capital-intensive
business into an imagination-intensive one.

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MANAGE MORALE
Taking risks is fraught with difficulties and dangers but we
can keep going if we learn how to manage our own morale.
1. have a strong belief that things will turn out the way you
want in the end
2. surround yourself with people who value you and want to
see you succeed
3. manage your stress levels by learning to take breaks, stop
often, and keep things light
4. treat criticism as a way to learn, not as a personal attack
5. keep your eye on the goal.
"I can say: "I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and it
makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it's
uncomfortable." Or I could say: "Get used to being
uncomfortable." It is uncomfortable doing something risky.
But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be
comfortable?" (Barbra Streisand)

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BIPODS AND TRIPODS
When we take risks, it is valuable to be able to distance
ourselves from what we are involved in and take an
objective position. Here we can see what is going on and
accept criticism and failure without feeling personally
attacked. Finding the third position is what Alistair Mant has
described as the difference between bipods and tripods.
1. Bipods see only themselves and others. Risk-taking is a
do-or-die undertaking; failure is either a personal
triumph or disaster: life is black and white.
2. Tripods see themselves and others in a situation from a
third position. Risk-taking is an undertaking that can be
observed with interest, comment and curiosity. Life is
colourful and has depth.
Mant says that the characters of Charles Dickens' novels are
bipods; those of Jane Austen are tripods.

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THE SPLENDOUR OF FAILURES
All risk carries with it the possibility of failure. Fear of failure
is one of the chief reasons we hesitate to take risks in the
first place. But we can overcome the fear of failure by
making friends with it.
We can do this by...
1. Not giving ourselves rigid targets when goals have to be
met. This allows us to talk not of "failure" but of "not
succeeding yet".
2. Seeking the positives in every failure. Each failure
teaches us something, even if it is how something isn't
supposed to work.
3. Believing that failure itself is a step on the road to
success.
"To try something you can't do, to try and fail, then try it
again. That to me is success. My generation will be judged
by the splendour of our failures." (William Faulkner)

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THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn