Have you read Project Hail Mary yet?

I have read it three times. Twice by myself and once with my daughter. If you read or saw The Martian, also written by Andy Weir, this book is even better. The movie is coming out next month, starring Ryan Gosling, and in a promo for the movie, Gosling summarized what I think makes this book so special.

“Andy Weir is such a special voice. He gives us this opportunity to pivot away from fearing the future and think of it as something just to figure out.”

Why am I bringing this up in a newsletter about management and leadership?

A common theme in Weir’s books is the characters taking massive risks. They take these risks because the cost of not taking them is greater than the cost of taking them. In the case of The Martian, an astronaut was going to die on Mars. In the case of Project Hail Mary, the whole world was going to die.

For the past few weeks, I have been talking with a lot of leaders about risk. More specifically, the need to take risks if you want to move forward. 

As a leader, one of your primary jobs is to understand the risks of both action and inaction by your team, communicate those risks, and set the parameters for how much risk members of your team are able to take. Without any one of those abilities, your team will suffer.

The risk of inaction

A leader needs to know enough about the situation their team is in to be able to understand both the risk of doing something and the risk of not doing something. Especially in a world like today, the risk of inaction is greater than ever. If a project doesn’t get done this week, that might be obsolete and cancelled next week.

If the managers in your organization don’t understand both sides of risk, they may never have the courage to make a decision and your whole organization will suffer.

Communicating risk

Unless you want to be the bottleneck for progress on your team, it isn’t enough to just understand risk, you have to be able to explain those risks to your team. This lets them make rational decisions about their day to day work and move things forward faster.

If only managers understand risk, people in your organization will never feel truly empowered because they don’t have the information they need.

Setting guard rails

Empowering the people on your team, doesn’t mean you let them do whatever they want. Once you understand the risk and communicate the risk, you then need to set clear boundaries for how much risk they are able to take on their own. This could be financial risk, how much money they can spend without your permission, time risk, when do they need to alert you about a delay, or whatever makes sense for your organization.

The ability of managers to set these kinds of parameters is critical for successful delegation.

One simple question

If any of this is resonating with you and you are looking for a way to move yourself or your organization forward, I would suggest that you need to start asking just one simple question.

“What is the risk of doing nothing?”

Why was the Manhattan Project able to move forward so quickly? Because of the risk of Nazi Germany getting atomic weapons first.

Why was Apollo able to get to the Moon in less than 10 years? Because of the risk of the Soviet Union getting to the Moon first.

Most of us are not dealing with those kinds of dramatic consequences, but there are still risks. The risk of our project getting cancelled. The risk of wasting another week on work that doesn’t matter. The risk of having our jobs automated by AI.

I have the pleasure of working with a lot of companies who are well aware of the risk of doing nothing and leaning forward to take advantage of the rapidly changing world. I am also working with a lot of organizations that are not quite there yet and trying to make a change.

If the latter sounds like your organization or team and you are looking for some help, please reply to this email. I would love to learn more about your situation and see if there is a way we can help your team better understand and take risks.

Other than that, go read Project Hail Mary and see how a little hope and a lot of risk, might just save the world.

Matt