Risk management Archives - Philippe Silberzahn

23 June 20224 September 2023Management, uncertainty

In uncertainty, be a vulnerable leader

Making decisions under uncertainty is a difficult art. One of the reasons is that the tools and concepts we use are largely designed for risk, for clearly defined and recurring situations. Such tools assume that uncertainty is something to be protected against. This mental model of protection, which seems so logical, is actually counterproductive. What if, on the contrary, we should not protect ourselves (too much) from uncertainty?

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4 December 201923 August 2023entrepreneurship

The Three Principles that Entrepreneurs Use to Control their Risk

How do entrepreneurs deal with risk? A persistent and widely held belief is that entrepreneurs are risk-takers; that they like to take risks. Ask anyone on the street or in a classroom and they will tell you: “An entrepreneur is someone who is bold, who likes to take risks”. But nothing could be further from the truth. Entrepreneurs don’t like risk; no study has ever shown that. What studies do show is that while entrepreneurs are willing to take risks because they recognize that they are necessary, they try to control them. To do this, they use three principles that are at the core of the entrepreneurial theory called effectuation, proposed twenty years ago by Darden professor Saras Sarasvathy.

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6 April 201519 September 2017uncertainty

My new Forbes Piece: 1962, The U2, and You: A Risk Management Lesson from the Cold War

My new Forbes piece shows that by looking at the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis, one can learn valuable lessons on Risk management. Read it here.