Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [97]
Gail Evans, the dynamic senior VP at CNN/Turner Broadcasting, is the epitome of the smart risk taker. She helped create a central booking operation for CNN to handle the hundreds of guests each week (“from prime ministers to people talking about sex and the single girl”) so that different shows wouldn't all be scrambling for the same guests when there was a major news event to cover.
“My ability to take risks,” says Evans, “has been greatly enhanced by living every day in front of Ted Turner, someone who has risked the ball game a hundred times and never gotten caught up in worrying about the people who said it couldn't be done. But at the same time, I never do anything by the seat of my pants. I make sure I'm better informed than anyone else. My fail-safe systems are redundant. If the booker wants to put on someone who is an expert on nuclear widgets, the researcher talks to him, too. Everyone is interviewed by two people. When you're trying to be creative, to take risks, you need to cover all your bases, to operate from a solid foundation.”
Part of covering your bases is not doing anything without telling the right people. If you take a risk without informing your boss, and it works, the success may be overshadowed by her annoyance at being left out of the loop. If you don't tell people and you fail, you will be all alone in the wilderness, with the lions licking their chops.
4. Give Yourself a Safety Net
A risk, by its very definition, is something that could fail. That's why you need, if possible, a safety net, something to break the fall.
There are all kinds of safety nets. There's the cushion you leave in your budget, for instance, to cover your loss. But the nice tight net I see gutsy girls use is their allies. When you have allies, they will support your risks, give you the help you need, and may even assist you in cleaning up any mess. If you sense you are without enough allies, return to Chapter 7.
HOW TO CONVINCE YOUR BOSS OR CLIENT TO GO ALONG
No matter how good a job you've done convincing yourself that a risk is worth taking, unless you're the head of your company, you're now going to have to convince someone else of the same thing. Of course, a major part of convincing your boss or upper management or a client to go along with your plan is to brief them as thoroughly as possible and be able to answer any questions. But that's not enough. Though management consultants stress these days that American business is in dire need of smart risk taking, many senior managers are scaredy cats. They are likely to balk at plans that will cost money, violate the usual way of doing things, and possibly make them look reckless. You may have to try some fancy stuff to get them to go along.
I think I'm pretty good at convincing bosses to take risky leaps, though it's something I've learned by trial and error. I remember being twenty-five and trying to convince Ruth Whitney, the editor-in-chief of Glamour, to let me go with a team of scientists on a sonar search for the Loch Ness monster and write about my experiences. Now, the primary reason I wanted the assignment was so that I'd be on a boat with lots of hopefully single male scientists, but I was pitching the idea as if it would totally tantalize the Glamour reader. Ruth looked completely skeptical, and asked how I could make the piece newsy with Glamour's three-month lead time. “What if I sleep with the Loch Ness monster?” I replied. Needless to say, I wasn't in Scotland before ye.
It goes without saying that no one is going to back a risk of yours unless they think there's something in it for them. I'm pretty sure I knew that at twenty-five, but I thought I could get around an idea's obvious lack of merit with a little charm and a lot of BS. I'd never try that today because I know I'd pay for it down the road.
Let's say your idea is one that makes absolute sense for your boss to