There are many devastating things that could happen to your company. Technological obsolescence, nuclear war, a cheap Chinese alternative.

If you choose to fixate on them, these thoughts can consume your days and paralyze your company’s strategic initiatives.

On the other hand, there are also many other (much more fixable) things that are eroding the value of your company – things that you have the power to solve with relatively little effort.

What’s interesting is how we often choose the status quo when it comes to these very fixable problems, while choosing to spend an unjustified amount of time worrying about the problems we don’t have the power to solve.

What we find when we work with companies is that there are many things that leaders can do to deliver a 10X return on their effort. 

It turns out that wearing a safety harness, doing a biometric screening, or not texting while driving takes very little effort. And all of these things easily deliver a 10X return on very little investment. 

When your employees (or you) are tempted to take a risk in one of these areas, it pays to consider the lopsided (and irrational) risk-reward statement that they are making with their actions.