We Need to Get Better at Assessing Risk
Rochester Business Journal by Abigail McHugh-Grifa
I have two sons. They are 8 and 10 years old. Like most young people, they do dumb and dangerous things on a fairly regular basis. So as a family, we have plenty of opportunities to think and talk about risk assessment. These conversations are clearly important for my children, but they are also helpful for me, because they have allowed me to get very clear and specific in my own mind about what types of risk I’m willing to accept and what I adamantly want to avoid.
I believe that taking age-appropriate, calculated risks is necessary and valuable for both children and adults, because it's how we learn, grow, and innovate. That said, it seems to me that most humans struggle to accurately weigh the costs and benefits of our choices, as well as the potential impacts of external forces that we can’t directly control, probably because we haven’t been rigorously trained in how to do so. Given that humanity is currently facing some rather enormous threats, that strikes me as problematic.
My own education in this regard has certainly been spotty. I don’t remember my parents ever explicitly talking to me about how to assess risk, though of course they tried to steer me away from danger and toward safe, wholesome activities. Perhaps I got some formal training on this in school, but if so, it wasn’t memorable. And even in professional settings, I’ve learned about risk assessment mostly via osmosis and trial and error, rather than any official curriculum or method.
As a parent and nonprofit executive, I make a concerted effort to be aware of threats that might negatively impact my family, community, and workplace, because I feel a deep sense of responsibility for others’ wellbeing. This can be quite overwhelming, because there are just SO many potential (and actual) sources of harm out there. In addition, we are collectively exposed to a wide variety of influences that stoke our fears and anxieties about relatively inconsequential or imagined threats, often with the goal of manipulating and/or distracting us. Assessing risk in this environment is, therefore, legitimately challenging.
So how can we individually and collectively improve our ability to navigate risk? Though I have yet to master it myself, here are a few strategies that seem to help:
Be discerning about what media you allow into your life and whose opinions you listen to, or as I tell my kids, “Garbage in, garbage out.” You can’t possibly become an expert on all the issues that impact your life, but you can seek out information from real experts and use that information to shape your decisions. Though it’s not always clear who the real experts are, and experts do sometimes make mistakes, the scientific method and peer review process are probably the best systems we have for understanding how the world works, so when a clear scientific consensus emerges about a specific topic (e.g., climate change), it’s probably wise to trust it. As someone who has a fair amount of expertise on a small handful of topics, I am deeply puzzled by and concerned about how experts are being ignored and sidelined in our country right now. (Yes, I am speaking from personal experience.) Of course I understand that expertise comes in many forms and can be acquired in many ways, so it’s not just about listening to people who have fancy degrees and credentials. That said, all opinions are not equally valid, and it’s impossible to accurately evaluate a risk if you don’t have good information about it, so we need to choose our sources carefully.
Get clear on what you truly need to be happy, healthy, and safe, then focus on optimizing those things and don’t stress about everything else. Fortunately, researchers in many different fields have developed a pretty clear understanding of what humans need to thrive (e.g., clean air, clean water, nutritious food, plenty of sleep and exercise, loving relationships, quality education, purposeful work, access to nature, etc.), so again, it’s important to base your decisions on good quality information from reliable sources and avoid marketing hype and other influences that don’t have your best interest at heart.
Explicitly identify your core values and how you want to live out those values. That process will ideally lead you to prioritize things like health, friendship, civic engagement, and environmental stewardship, rather than financial wealth, physical appearance, and material possessions. To some extent, this is my bias coming through, but it also aligns with the research outlined above, which indicates that pursuing prosocial values makes people happier, healthier, and safer. So from a risk assessment perspective, orienting yourself toward prosocial values serves as a heuristic (i.e., mental shortcut) for making choices that increase your wellbeing.
Do the basic health and safety things that you know you’re supposed to do (e.g, brushing and flossing your teeth, wearing your seatbelt, not staring at a screen all day). It’s funny how we humans resist practices that we know are good for us. I am certainly guilty of this, and I believe it goes back to the natural impulse we all have as children to resist our parents’ authority in order to individuate and develop autonomy. As we get older and still find that we are subject to others’ control (e.g., teachers, bosses, government), something inside us longs to rebel. Unfortunately, instead of channeling that energy in productive ways, we often undermine our own wellbeing by breaking rules and norms that would otherwise keep us healthy and safe. It’s immature and dumb, but also quite normal and human.
Choose your vices wisely. To avoid the situation described above, I believe it’s important/strategic to retain some degree of naughtiness in your life, simply because trying to be perfect is boring and guaranteed to fail. So I allow myself to indulge in fun little transgressions that are unlikely to harm me or anyone else, but that still provide a bit of the excitement that typically comes with risky behavior.
Make a habit of weighing short-term risks against longer-term risks, and the cost of action against the cost of inaction. I know this is difficult in professional settings where performance is measured according to quarterly earnings or other narrowly defined metrics, which is why it’s important to push back against systems that encourage a myopic view of any problem or opportunity. The Seventh Generation Principle used by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is a helpful concept to keep in mind for this purpose.
Dedicate more time, energy, and attention to important problems/decisions and less time, energy, and attention to unimportant problems/decisions. If it takes you longer to choose an outfit than choose a doctor, you’re not thinking clearly about risk. I apologize if this comes across as harsh or judgmental, but our culture encourages us to focus on things that really don’t matter, so it’s something we all struggle with. Though small problems can sometimes feel very big, we urgently need to get clear on which issues are likely to cause significant harm and then dedicate a correspondingly significant portion of our resources to addressing them.
Solicit a diverse range of opinions and perspectives to inform your decision-making, because you just don’t know what you don’t know until you ask, and it’s inherently risky to make important decisions based on partial or biased information.
The threats we face right now are bigger and scarier than what most of us have ever had to deal with. These include climate change and other environmental crises, the disintegration of our democracy and looming threat of political violence in the U.S., the unregulated development of generative AI, an escalating war in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, etc. Dang, it’s a lot! So even if we didn’t receive a solid education in risk assessment earlier in life, we now have ample opportunities to develop and employ those skills, which I hope we’ll collectively take advantage of, because our safety and wellbeing depends on it.