Take Risks to Make Progress

Most turtles live almost half of their lives inside their shell. Every time they sense an enemy, or the weather’s no good, they retreat and wait.

I don’t know about you, but this feels extremely sad to me.

Imagine hiding every time something felt mildly risky?

Sometimes I work with teams like this. They're so caught up in the things that might go wrong that they self-censor their ideas. They fear public or political retribution, resist innovation and point fingers in every outward direction to prove all the reasons why change is too risky to try.

“Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.”
– James Bryant Conant

What this approach fails to account for, of course, is the cost of inaction. Those of us in the public service have a duty of stewardship that should never be conflated with conservatism. The community pays us to do our jobs, and in doing so, trusts that we are going to make good decisions and deliver good stuff that improves their lives.

What this doesn’t mean is that we should be too afraid to take risks, spend money or try new things. The one branch of society that has nothing but public good at heart should be showing leadership and pushing the envelope on what’s possible.

We’re weird about risk. We downplay the risk of the status quo, and overestimate the risk of change. We assume that risk is negative. We forget that risk is simply the yin to our reward yang!

The turtle’s not all bad, of course. When he sticks out his neck, he gets somewhere – and he teaches us that while you don’t need to be fast to make progress, you do need to be brave.

Is your team hiding in a shellst? What are the costs of inaction for your community?