Tak ing Risks
“What has been your experience with taking risks in
your job?”
■“One of my jobs in mergers and acquisitions was to
research and analyze risks and benefits of possible deals. I
discovered some high-risk factors while researching one
company and could not recommend the deal based on my
findings. I knew that my manager wanted this particular
deal to go through and that she wouldn’t be happy with
my findings. I put together the facts and figures on spread-
sheets and made a presentation to her. Although disap-
pointed, she trusted my work and was satisfied that I had
exhibited due diligence in getting the facts needed.”
■“One example of taking a risk and trying something new is
when I was able to lead a cross-functional team in a com-
pany that had never used cross-functional teams before. As
the lead engineer I decided to try an experiment and took
people from various functions and cross-trained them. It
was a huge success, and production doubled in a month.
The employees really accepted it because it made them
feel like they were learning something new that would be
of value to them in future jobs. It was received well by
management and is now a common practice at the com-
pany.”
■“There is always a risk when analyzing data and breaking it
down so that the customer can understand the facts. I did
this for a man who was having a difficult time understand-
ing the numbers and was refusing to buy until he did. I ran
several compilations for him—some which was not the
usual information we share. I thought in this case it would
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