The vital role of strategic bravery in business: Experts say taking risks is key in business

A compelling panel discussion was held at the 15th Limassol Economic Forum this week, where Caspar Berry, renowned expert in risk and decision-making, was joined by top Cypriot business leaders to explore the vital role of strategic bravery in today’s business landscape.

Here are some of the key takeaways from what the panelists had to say.

Timur Turlov, CEO of FREEDOM Holding corp, Founder of FREEDOM24

Very few people are ready to take risks, and if you are brave enough to take them, and apply effort, talent and resources to a situation it will be much more beneficial than if you don’t take the risk. I agree that it is also very important to fold. In a situation where you can’t influence the outcome, it doesn’t matter what kind of decision you make. Any decision can become the right decision. Some cases I try not to think too much.”

“In the very beginning you have much less experience, less resources, you have to usually take higher risks than later. To find a niche in the market you have to deal with much higher risks, you have to be much more efficient, involved, and risk tolerant. Some decisions are better not to take at all.

I did a lot of calculations at the beginning and most of them were useless in the end. I made all these plans and everything was wrong. For my first year, my budget was completely crazy. We planned, and then had to do something completely different.”

Vasileios Chatzikos, CEO Siemens A.E.

“Data analytics is a very important tool to analyse our performance. What are the business risks and do how you adapt and identify them? This is very much connected to the new technologies entering the market and we see the way we were addressing the markets 10-15 years ago is no more. We have AI now and the risk business-wise is higher.”

Clea Evagorou, Deloitte Cyprus, Partner, Risk Advisory Leader and Risk Advisory FSI Leader for North South Europe

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. We spend most of our time on anaysing the risks for our clients. There is a certain degree of intuition.

Caspar Berry, renowned poker player, Hollywood movie scriptwriter, business consultant and expert in risk and decision-making.

There is this misconception that businesses dislike uncertainty. People may but this is not the case for businesses. All risks are taken when feeling uncertain. The more entrepreneurial, the more startup mindset that relishes uncertainty, the greater returns are to be made. You process uncertainty and sell certainty.

He also said that there needs to be alignment between the decisions that we make and the people that will be judging our decisions. “The secret to making great decision is to argue for latitude. Push back sometimes and say you understand, but I need to do that. You might be wrong. But you might not, that’s how niches are found.” He added, You can make good decisions and because of things you can’t control you can have bad outcomes. When mistakes happen, learn from them, embrace them and ask yourself what is the net effect?”