Because all of business life is fraught with uncertainty, you
cannot avoid taking risks almost every single day. However, you
should evaluate each risk and place it into one of the following
categories:
First, there are the risks that you must take to stay in business.
These involve hiring and assigning people to specific tasks,
advertising and promotion, investment in new product development,
committing expenditures to develop new sources of
business, and so on. These are essential risks that go with the
territory of running a modern business. They are unavoidable.
Second, there are the risks that you can afford to take.
These are actions and decisions for which there is no guaran-
The Principle of Security—Cover All Your Bases
teed outcome but for which you can absorb their cost as a part
of doing business if they are not successful. Bringing a new
product or service to the market or running an advertisement
in an untested medium is a risk that you can afford to take. If
the actions fail, they will not threaten the survival of your
enterprise.
The third type of risk is the risk that you cannot afford to
take. The cost is too high. The consequences of failure may
sink your business. Even though such risks offer extraordinary
upside potential, their downside potential may be so severe
that it is better to pass on them when they arise. Survival of the
enterprise must be your overriding consideration.
A risk that you cannot afford to take would be an investment
of so much money that its failure would cause your
company to go bankrupt. In almost every risky situation, the
potential benefits can be extremely attractive. But paying
close attention to the potential downfalls will give you the
security that you need to remain in operation. Be willing to
say “No!”
Finally, there are the risks that you cannot afford not to
take. There are many activities in the operation of your business
that entail high degrees of uncertainty, but you must
engage in them anyway. A risk that you cannot afford not to
take may be entering into a strategic alliance with another
company to counter a competitor who threatens the sales of
your main products or services. There is no guarantee that this
decision will be successful but often you cannot afford not to
do it if you want to stay in business.
Security in business requires that you continually ask,
“What could possibly go wrong?” Whatever your answer to that
question, make provisions to secure against the worst possible
outcome. This enables you to sleep well at night and to concentrate
your energies on business success during the day.
The Principle of Security in Personal Success
Your goals in personal life are to be successful, happy, healthy,
and prosperous. Your goals are to fulfill your full potential and
become everything that you are capable of becoming. Your aim
is not just to live, but to live a great life. One of the most important
principles for assuring that you accomplish all of these is
the practice of the principle of security in everything you do.
The need for security is one of the deepest and most profound
needs we have. The psychologist Abraham Maslow concluded
that our needs for security—financial, emotional, physical—
are so vital that, when our security is threatened for any
reason, we think of nothing else. Our security needs preoccupy
us completely.
You could be going along quite happily in your life, quite
content and having few problems. Then, one day, you go into
work in the morning and someone tells you that the company
will be laying off 50 percent of the staff, and no one knows
which 50 percent it will be.
From being happy and confident, you could immediately
become scared and nervous. Before, your life was flowing
along like “Old Man River,” but now your financial security is
threatened. Suddenly, from not thinking about it at all, you will
begin to think and talk about nothing else. Until the decision is
made about who will be laid off, you will be totally preoccupied
with this threat to your security.