Help Your Company Take Smarter Risks! May 1-7 is “Take a Smart Risk Week”

Glen Rock, NJ (March 2005) – No company or organization can reach the next level without taking risks. Obviously, companies that take foolish risks that jeopardize their success don’t reach the next level. So the key for your business is to take smart and calculated risks.
Because May 1-7 is “Take a Smart Risk Week,” now is the perfect time to examine what risks your company has taken and the results you achieved. More important, use this time to determine how you can improve your company’s ability to take risks that have the best chance of success in your organization.
Author and business performance expert Pamela S. Harper advises, “To accelerate progress toward a company’s key objectives, leaders must consistently encourage and reward employees for taking smart risks. However, oftentimes risks that should work can become snarled in strategic gridlock – the persistent organizational problems that pile up and grind progress to a halt. To keep this from happening, leaders must first uncover any common but mistaken assumptions about their organization’s reality that can create “hidden roadblocks” to success.”
In her book, Preventing Strategic Gridlock®: Leading Over, Under & Around Organizational Jams to Achieve High Performance Results (Cameo Publications, $19.95, ISBN 0-9715739-4-8), Harper shows business leaders how to avoid the hidden roadblocks that could lead to strategic gridlock, preventing them from taking smarter risks. As Harper explains, business leaders can prevent strategic gridlock when they fully consider all six of the guidelines and principles of organizational reality, which are represented by the acronym U.N.L.O.C.K.® That is, business leaders need to Understand the full challenge, Negotiate buy-in of key stakeholders, Locate cultural advancers and blockers, Organize relevant goals, priorities, and action plans, Communicate credibly, and Keep adjusting.
As the old saying goes, “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” So during “Take a Smart Risk Week” and throughout the rest of the year, help your company get more of the results you want by taking smarter and more calculated risks.
Pamela S. Harper helps business leaders transform their strategies into high performance results by identifying seven roadblocks that stall success and the keys to unlock them. Founder and President of Business Advancement, Inc., Pam bases her in-depth knowledge of the impact of organizational issues on her twenty years of internal and external consulting to leaders of entrepreneurial, middle market, and Fortune 500 companies.
For more information or a review copy of Preventing Strategic Gridlock®: Leading Over, Under & Around Organizational Jams to Achieve High Performance Results, please call 866-372-2636 or send an email to Amy@cameopublications.com.

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