Driving and Swimming have always been considered the life saving skills. Risk taking needs to be added to this.
If there is one skill that’s never taught in schools and colleges, it is taking and managing risks. Risk is always described as something scary that needs to be avoided and worried about. Millennials are proving it wrong. Prior to 90s, Government ( and Public sector enterprises) was the biggest employer in India and the bureaucracy always taught one how to avoid taking any chances. Private enterprises became prominent in 2000s that slowly brought in meritocracy that focused on productivity and hard work.
The roaring twenties of 2020 have ushered in a world where nothing is certain. Best companies fall from grace and fail, Rock stars become persona-non-grata overnight and extremes have become more common , be it the inequalities in society , radical behaviors or social media generated movements. Firm which advocated that only ‘Paranoid survive’ is finding it tough to survive the brutal global tech enabled world. Pandemic is suddenly making the commercial real estate look shaky, dividend paying darlings of the pensioners are needing to borrow to keep the dividend, governments are not thinking twice in printing/underwriting debt that’s a quarter of their economy. Change that used to take decades is happening in months. Management gurus are finding it difficult to even speak, let alone spout a theory to explain the world.
Millennials with nothing to lose are punting it all out, be it the options on fractional shares, bold startups, radical approaches to finance and life. Taking calculated risks has become a necessity to survive. Work was the means of earning and identity. Today wealth building is the means to freedom. While 90s took a few decades to build a unicorn, it takes a few years today.
For many generations, this is the new normal . Playing safe has become the ‘unsafe’. Risk taking will very soon be Business as Usual and not knowing it can put your life in danger.
No comments:
Post a Comment