Here's how you can navigate risk in your entrepreneurial ventures.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. From the beginning, it's important to size multiple strategic choices along with potential revenue addition or cost savings, ease or difficulty of implementation, and cogent risks that must be considered and planned for. When assessing risks to your project, its important to consider both internal resource risks (e.g. funding, resources, alignment, capabilities) as well as market risks (e.g. economic, social, cost, competition, environmental). Creating and working a spreadsheet containing all of these factors as well as probability of occuring and potential impacts to revenue increase or cost reduction was very helpful in our risk assessments.

They said no risk no reward. But that doesn't mean we can't evaluate the risk level and compare the same with our risk taking threshold. In today's ever changing world there are different kind of risks and it is always prudent to assess all types of risk before entering into an venture. The magnitude of risk changes as your firm grows but your ability to gauge risk should be up to the mark .

Calculate Risk taking basically just means to think ahead. What are the possible outcomes and how do we deal with them. That process needs to involve different perspectives and ideas. So in best case you not have to do it alone but in a team. If you don't have team look externally even run ideas by friends or family in an appropriate way.

Research is very important in doing a risk assessment - that includes consulting with experts. Here's why: we all have blind spots and sometimes you don't know what you don't know. It only takes one good unknown to ruin a business, maybe even before it begins. You don't want to be months in, years in... Thousands of dollars in, millions of dollars in... Only to discover that significant risks exist that you didn't know about. Because those risks now are going to force you to mitigate, and mitigating risks costs money and time and effort. Furthermore, statistical probabilities are still at play even when you're unaware of the risk. You may discover the risk so far in that the likelihood of a bad thing happening is now high, or higher.

Old school type of assessments are dead. It should be part of daily routine and continuous. Covering all the internal and external factors.

Don't get carried away. Mitigating risk can be very time consuming and money intensive. Especially when it come to insurance's. So having a buffer to also absorb some of the risk you can't mitigate can help you to move quicker on and be more productive.

Shortly speaking, you should not be a barrier or business stopper when establishing the mitigation plans. Make the people’s lives easier while minimizing the risks.

Especially as your company grows your financial system needs to keep up. I have seen massive companies still using basic excel sheets, because they always done it that when, since they started in a garage. Seems daunting but worth it over time to switch to more complex but also more efficient systems.

Tone at the top as well as in the middle is crucial for all financial controls. Growth mindset rather than fixed mindset (while setting these financial controls) will make your life easier.

Market analysis sounds always so fancy, but in most cases that just means that you need to have knowledge in the market. You don't need to know everything, but have the right sources to find out.

Radars should always be on. You have to listen what your colleagues, suppliers, vendors, customers, business partners, consumers shortly the ecosystem is saying and act accordingly.

The fist step is to accept that you can fail, only than can you start thinking about it. Failure is part of life and having a plan how to deal with it in your business is important. But often there is no solution that fits it all. You need to have the right mind set otherwise you will go down with the ship.

Structured crisis management team will always work. The critical point is how much you’re used to it. Sometimes desktop drills, sometimes role plays or thinking out of the box helps for this.

Crises management is an essential part of business. The best time to prepare for crises is before they happen. Do this by researching the types of crises that businesses in your industry typically experience, and prepare for those. Also, imagine the many things that could go wrong - "if this, then that." Then prepare accordingly. Sometimes preparing can avoid the crisis. Sometimes preparing cannot avoid the crises but it can position the business to navigate the crisis and avoid the destruction that could come from crisis.

It takes a village and none of us know it all. I have learned new things over and over again by being open to learning. And don't be afraid to fail! Sometimes the only way to learn is to try things and fail quickly and compensate. As FDR said: "Be utterly unafraid of experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But, above all, try something."

In entrepreneurial ventures, managing risk involves thorough planning, learning from failures, and staying adaptable. Conduct market research, develop a solid business plan, and embrace a mindset of experimentation. Implement strategies like diversifying revenue streams and seeking advice from mentors to minimize risk. Stay flexible and adjust your strategies as needed to navigate uncertainties and seize opportunities along the way. #ahmedalaali11