The world has changed so fast, remarkably fast that safe has become the new risky. One moment of comfort, and you are left behind. One moment of comfort and suddenly you lose your position at the table of the best and get relegated to eating crumbs. One moment of playing it too safe and suddenly, you are outcompeted and you become extinct. Safe is the fastest way to obsolesce. Safe is the fastest way to extinction. In tremendous ways, to choose to play it safe is the new risk. The only way to avoid risks is to take some risks.
That’s why we started Next Lean. Not to brag or speak volumes out of nothing, I think Next Lean is currently the best Management Consulting Firm in Uganda. How then did a firm that’s barely four months old grow massively to become the best consulting firm in the country? Call it luck, call it chance, we did it by innovating ourselves to the top. I constantly tell my partners here that we have only gotten here because we take on more risks every single day. Our competitors in the market, well, they are playing it safe.
It thus amazes me that we have a very young, fast, agile and lean team that’s dedicated to one cause, taking risks and continuously improving without stop, without getting satisfied. I am glad to be part of such a very hungry and foolish team. Hungry and Foolish is what describes those who take risks. Yet in the end, they have the last laugh.
Next Lean is part of Lean Inc. We did not start off with Lean Inc in mind. However, the success of Next Lean got other people pitching to us a number of ideas and partnerships. Some asked that we take a stake in their companies and introduce Lean there. From Events companies to industries. We now have a wide range of portfolio under the Lean Inc. It’s another risk we took.
You know what scares people about death. It is not death, it is the regrets, the lingering realization that they played it too safe and all they have to get for that comfort is death. So they get pretty annoyed, angry, wishing about what coulda, shoulda, and woulda.
At Next Lean we have daily challenges that encourage people to take risks. It’s a challenge named; “Who failed the fastest?” We believe in the Silicon mantra of “Fail Fast, Fail Often” and that the result of all this is a faster iteration towards success and greatness.
Most companies will never move from good to great. Most people will never know what they are capable of. It’s all because of one reason, we play it too safe, and we enclose ourselves within the comfort zones of our domains. We fear to step out. We choose to play it safe. If only we knew that it is by choosing to play it safe that we actually take on the real risks.
With artificial intelligence coming our way, the internet of things just to mention but a few, anybody who chooses to play it safe will be extinct within a year. See that restaurant over there, see that business over there, the only thing standing between it and its extinction is the rate at which it takes risks.
There are many companies that played it too safe and went out of business. They got comfortable doing the same thing and were scared to fly out and move with their times. They were out innovated. They are now no more.
My model company is Facebook. It’s always taking risks, introducing new features, doing new things, some fail, some work out but it never stops on the journey of taking risks. That’s why Facebook succeeded, that’s why Myspace failed.
You know why Next Lean has become the best within four months? Because we solved the problems other management consultancy firms feared. We took on the projects where the chances of failure we greater than the chances of success.
It is now an age where we have to disrupt ourselves. Companies have to innovate within themselves and within their industries. It is time to tear the boxes and think outside those shackles. Wherever you are in life at the moment, the only thing holding you back is your fear of taking risks.
As Theodore Roosevelt noted; “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”