The Green Rocket

Taking risks is often associated with irrationality; but taking risks doesn’t necessarily make you irrational. To make your brain go a little vertigo on the words irrational and rational for a moment, consider the following: If you rationally analyze and become aware of the possibility of consequences of the risk you are taking than doesn’t that offset the irrationality?

Rational Irrationality.

This is a quality of an effective risk taker. Of course, you may still be deemed irrational by others who do not rationalize the way you do.  However, once you’ve considered the angles and have still decided to go through with the irrational action,

1. There must be a damn good reason and you can defend your position as a rationally irrational person and…
2. You’re more likely to see it through to the end – a perseverance element that will likely evoke respect (and/or more credibility), and even possible success.

The reason I brought this up is that taking risks are how things happen.  As Georgina Bernard Shaw once said:

The reasonable woman adapts herself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to herself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable women.

Taking a risk can occur in several ways.  People may take risks to create an opportunity, or they may risk something to seize an existing opportunity.  Often, the two coexist.  An example of this would be the buyout of the Body Shop by L’Oreal in 2006. In order to disseminate the values of the Body Shop to a wider audience, the founders had to breach the mainstream walls of hesitation somehow.  It may have been questionable for them to affiliate the company with one like L’Oreal which is not so known for practicing the kind of ethics that the Body Shop holds strong, such as non-animal testing and community trading projects.

However, don’t be fooled; if the founders Anita and Gordon Roddick were only after the money, they could have sold out to the stock market long before the buy out.  Instead, they persevered in building a responsible company through upholding these not-so-popular corporate values, including Anita (as the figurehead) living what she preaches and stirring up controversy many times in debates over ethical issues.

Selling the Body Shop to L’Oreal may indeed have been a risk, but it was one that was thoroughly reasoned. As Anita herself commented in her response to the transaction,

I want to make things happen, to spread human values wider in business if I possibly can. And this sale gives us the chance to do so.

Regardless of the outcome, it is exciting to see companies like L’Oreal recognizing the profit margin of responsible corporate practices; this is the type of occurrence that can lead to change, especially in relation to business.

So whatever your opinion may be on L’Oreal’s acquisition, the point remains that risk takers can be agents of change.  To take a risk, fear of failure must first be overcome.  This fear can be present in a variety of ways, the most obvious being the lack of success of a project as it was planned.  A major counterargument to this fear is that risks gather attention, and the more a topic is debate–regardless of the success or failure of its initiators–the more awareness it’ll provoke. Unawareness is one of the greatest challenges for a call for action.

Moreover, the beauty of the internet nowadays is that individuals who may easily succumb to a perspective now see the emergence of many different facts and opinions, so it is not as easy for a debate to remain one-sided. For proof of this, consider the climate change debate: once a given, now a controversy.

Either way, people are talking and things are happening.  One can also relate this back to the Body Shop buyout event, as companies adhere to shareholder requests, which are based around market demands. If consumers start demanding environmentally and socially responsible products, companies are going to start investing in them. Not too mention the more products that emerge, the more affordable they become.

Concerning the power of controversy, creating risks is also apparent in PETA’s $1 million dollar competition for in vitro meat. While many have argued that the world isn’t ready for test tube meat, PETA hopes the competition will not only bring awareness to meat alternatives and the suffering of animals, but the commercial element of the competition will help the product reach mainstream markets and the hearts (and stomachs) of consumers, making the cause appealing.  Even if the product fails, it has gotten people not only thinking and talking about alternatives to meat eating and factory farming, but putting forth resources to create them on a new level.

Another fear that may be less obvious to identify but can still be associated with failure is that the actions you take may be too risky and therefore you will just be considered irrational – with a negative connotation of “crazy”, “quack” or “not worth listening to”, which can actually hurt the cause you are fighting for rather than help it.  This fear is especially relevant if your mission is to be an Al Gore and create awareness about a topic.  Some organizations like Greenpeace have crossed this boundary a number of times. However, while for some, Greenpeace may have hurt its cause through unreasonable action, it has arguably raised legitimate awareness about important topics with many campaigns.  So how does one find the balance? Approaching this challenge is a little more complicated, but it does not mean you shouldn’t try.

I’ve thought out some of the ways (rationally of course…) to be a risk taker that may help to overcome the challenge of “failure”.  This list comes from my own passion for risk taking, professional leadership training I have undergone, and my experience in mentoring individuals and groups in leadership skills. I invite others to add to, or refute, what I present here: (in no particular order)

• Do not get defensive towards criticism. Remember, you are taking a risk.  If everybody was in agreement with it, it is unlikely that whatever you are doing would be considered so risky.
• Do your research.  This applies to the concept of rationally irrationality – if you’re going to do something that may be considered unreasonable, make sure you analyze all potential consequences and have strong points to back yourself up so you can stand confident in them. This will give you credibility.
• Know your enemy.  This goes hand in hand with your research and don’t get defensive. Don’t just listen to opposing perspectives, engage them! If you keep opposition close and involve them and their criticisms as much as you can, more people will talk about the issue.  If you know the enemy well and have done your research, you will be able to hold your own in a debate and gain respect and credibility, and are more likely to succeed.
• Persevere.  Although I brought it up above, I think it is important to reassert this point.  Stay strong in the cause and your action, because there will be challenges–if life was easy, we’d all be bored.
• Try Anyway. Reconsider your doubts–do they have rationality attached to them, or a fear that you can overcome.  As Anitia Roddick said in the face of the criticism surrounding the body shop buyout, “…Nothing on earth works quite as we expect it to. That is both a tragedy and a blessed relief. But there is absolutely no point in refusing to try…If I can see a major opportunity to spread those community trade principles, and to influence the behaviour of the cosmetics industry, at least I have to take the risk.”
• Be proud of your courage.  It’s easy to sit back and be an observer, and there is great truth to the phrase: Everybody is a critic.
• Live what you preach–literally.  If you’re going to demonstrate something in an irrational or risky way, you best be damn sure you are following the same values. Think Ghandi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
• Don’t alienate publicity, work with it.  Goes with the enemy idea.
• Don’t hurt another cause to promote your own.
• Don’t resort to violence. Violence will not succeed in the long run.  Again, think Ghandi.
• Last but not least, interact at a community level.  Make yourself available to some sort of personal contact. The more human-touch your presentation of a cause has, the more people will be able to relate to it and likely to listen to your thoughts.  Of course it is physically impossible to answer a bazillion emails a day, but make a blog or vlog, go to a conference or related event and meet people, anything that speaks to people personally. (The internet/web 2.0 is fantastic…use it.)

These points can be considered on any scale be it group or individual. They can be applied to actions on a group level, such as those taken by environmental organizations or individuals looking to make a difference beyond their own lifestyle, or on a more personal level.

On that note, it is important to keep in mind a couple of final points about being an agent of change.  One of the greatest strengths of a leader is the ability to enable others to reach a common goal.  In other words, you don’t have to be a figurehead and do all the work yourself to be an agent of change. Sometimes it is just as difficult–and risky in terms of trust and teamwork–to take risks to create opportunities for others to advance in their cause.  Even if you are not in the public eye for it, you are just as much an agent of change. Teachers are a great example of this.

Another note about change is not to undervalue the smaller actions that you may take on a personal level, such as installing solar panels on your roof.  This is because even small actions face just as much of an intimidation factor as many of the globally reaching ones from organizations like Greenpeace.  Doing anything that may differentiate you and publicize your perspectives is a risk that opens you up to criticism.  So don’t be afraid to start small, because every risk you take to be an agent of change will make a difference.

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