Risk Equals Happy

*/By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc./*

A friend of mind with a very sharp and eclectic mind (the best type of
friends to have) sent me an article from the July issue of Psychology
Today.  The article entitled "What Happy People Do Differently [1]" was
authored by Robert Biswas-Diener and Todd Kashdan.

One of the key points of the article is that happy people explore outside of
their comfort zones.  In other words, there are "real rewards of
risk".  While we can have a debate about whether or not corporations are
psychologically capable of happiness (or even what that would mean), I
believe the central tenet of the article holds for corporations as well as
individuals; namely there are real benefits to taking risks.

Anyone who reads my blogs regularly knows that I am a huge proponent of risk
as being viewed as two sided – that is there is good risk and bad risk, and
risk management involves managing both types of risk.  With this mindset
there are real benefits of risk.

Individuals who do not take chances tend to live boring and unhappy lives –
basically the premise of the Psychology Today article.  Likewise
organizations that do not take risks produce boring and relatively mediocre
profits. 

However there may be another even more significant (bad) risk lurking within
corporations that do not want to take risks – namely the risk that risk
averse corporations attract unhappy risk averse employees.


[1]
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201306/what-happy-people-do-differently