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Playing It Safe…Is Dangerous! by Robert J. Kriegel & Louis Patler
When things get tough, Conventional Wisdom offers us a lot of free—and useless—advice, including such favorites as "Don’t make waves"; "Play it safe"; "Pull in your horns." Consequently, rather than performing at our potential, we concentrate on cutting our losses. During the mid-eighties, when IBM was experiencing tough times, I was invited to speak at several of IBM’s management conferences. Prior to the programs, John Steuri, a division general manager, told me, "Talk to them about the importance of taking risks. It’s tough out there. We’ve got to be more entrepreneurial. Nobody is taking risks, they’re all playing it safe. We’re not going to get the lead back that way. Playing it safe is dangerous."
PLAYING "NOT TO LOSE" Sports provides a great arena for seeing how people play it safe and play not-to-lose when under pressure. The golfer worried about missing will putt too tentatively and the ball rolls short. Wanting to make sure the second serve goes in the box, the tennis player aims it carefully and serves it too softly—plink, right into the net. I often saw this play-it-safe strategy in my Inner Skiing programs. Afraid of falling, skiers would be "too careful." They would ski tentatively, leaning back, up the hill. But when your weight is back on the tail of the skis, they jet out from under and you lose control. Whammo! Your worst fear gets realized. Playing it safe is dangerous. After winning an NCAA-record 29 games in a row, Ray Meyer, coach of the De Paul University basketball team, was actually relieved when his team finally lost. Why? Because Meyer saw that the team was so worried about not ending their winning streak that they weren’t playing their game, the fast-break, run-and-gun style that had gotten the streak going. They were too tentative, too intent on protecting their record. Finally, when they lost, a somewhat relaxed Coach Meyer told the press, "Now we can get back to playing to win instead of playing not to lose."
PLAYING TO WIN VERSUS PLAYING NOT TO LOSE A very visible contrast between playing to win and playing not to lose occurred in the semifinals of the 1990 Wimbledon tournament. On one side of the net was Monica Seles. Her opponent was Zina Garrison. As the match proceeded, though, it became increasingly clear that Seles’s most formidable opponent was not Garrison but herself. "The match was so close," said a crestfallen Seles afterward. "I was going for the safety shots. I found it hard to really pound the ball, and even on her second serve, I was scared to hit it for winners." Garrison, on the other hand, didn’t play it safe. "I just told myself to go for it," says Garrison. "None of this tentative stuff. If I’d missed, at least I’d know that this time I went for it." Advantage, game, set, and match to Garrison.
STANDOFF Games are a great learning vehicle. One of my favorites is called Standoff. In this game two people stand facing each other, about an arm’s length apart. The object of the game is to get the other player off balance by slapping or dodging palms. Size or strength alone offers little or no advantage, whereas timing, quickness, and strategy make the difference. Initially, I tell people, "Play with only one goal in mind: Don’t lose. Don’t get knocked off balance, play it safe. The object is to be a survivor. Assume that if you are knocked off balance you have just lost your job." After the game I ask for key words that describe the attitudes and the strategies the players used to ensure they didn’t lose during the game. Below are the responses typical of those cited by thousands of Standoff players:
Playing "Standoff" not to lose
Playing not to lose at work We then transfer the discussion to how we play not to lose at work. Below is a representative list from one group:
Playing Standoff quickly reveal that playing not to lose is a no-win game. When you play it safe, you don’t take the risks, innovate or confront the challenges necessary to win. When you play not to lose, you don’t utilize the skills and strategies that would get you ahead. Worrying about losing, failing, or making a mistake gets you tense, anxious, and apprehensive, which prevents you from being at your best and from enjoying the game. And when you aren’t enjoying what you are doing, you won’t do it well.
GOOD ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH Occasionally when you play it safe you may play a pretty good game. But in our action-packed culture, we are surrounded by "good enough" performances. What is becoming apparent is that being "good" isn’t "good enough." Simply doing a "good" job won’t give you the edge you need in today’s incredibly pressure-packed marketplace. "Good enough" only puts you in with the rest of the pack. In sports, the difference between a good performance and a great one is measured often in hundredths of a second. The same fine line is true in business and in school. The factor that differentiates peak performers from good performers is not usually their level of skill. It is how they think and act under pressure. And as the pressure increases, so does the importance of the mental game. Peak performers are bold and daring; they don’t play it safe, they don’t play not to lose.
BLIND SPOTS AND PANIC BUTTONS Everybody plays not to lose in some areas of life and in some situations. To perform at peak levels, you need to be able to recognize your own blind spots and understand where, when, and how you aren’t taking risks or confronting personal challenges. Playing not to lose is so deeply ingrained that many of us do so automatically. When faced with what seems to be an imposing challenge or tough situation, "play it safe" becomes the subliminal message. We all have our blind spots, old habits, and panic buttons, especially when we’re under pressure. Becoming aware of them is the first step in breaking the pattern and avoiding getting tripped up by them in the future. Just as when you are traveling, if you are aware of the roadblocks, obstacles, and detours that could surprise you, slow you down, or stop you in your tracks, you can change your route and avoid them completely. Understanding yourself and the way you think under pressure is critical for thriving. Here are some examples of the most common ways people and organizations play not to lose. See which of them you can identify with.
M&M: THE CORPORATE JUNK FOOD DIET When Harry Truman was president, he had a sign on his desk that said, THE BUCK STOPS HERE—the final responsibility was his. With the play-it-safe mentality, the prevailing attitude is, "Pass the buck." In a fast-paced world, making decisions can appear to be risky. People don’t want to go out on a limb and risk having the finger of blame pointed at them. One way to avoid responsibility for making a decision is to try to get everyone "on board" by utilizing a "meetings and memos strategy"—the M&Ms of business. Call meetings, form committees, do more research, get a focus group going—anything to avoid making a choice, taking a stance, or reaching a decision. Consequently, rather than generating business, they generate reams of paper; and instead of taking action, they hold endless meetings. A high price is paid for all those committees and meetings, both by the company and the "meet-ees." Many studies have estimated that the average manager spends about 40 percent of his or her time in meetings. In fact, when I mentioned that figure, most people scoff at it, saying they wish it were that low. "I go to so many meeting," one marketing manager told me, "that the only time I can get some work done is after five, when the meetings stop and I can get to my desk." And at the end of a long day of meetings, when tired and rushed, people do not do their most creative or quality work. It’s tough to think clearly when your mind is buzzing from a day of meetings and you are bushed.
CYA-c.c. Millions of memos are sent out every day. That’s bad enough. But adding insult to injury is the fact that every memo has 10 CYA (cover your ass) copies sent. The combination of the memo and the CYA mentality takes an enormous toll of time, energy, and resources. Think of how much time you spend in a day or a week reading, talking, filing, and doing "damage control" of memos that have nothing directly to do with you but that somebody copied you to cover themselves. "I have more garbage to read, more expertise I’m expected to have, more hedging that I’m exposed to. I get so many memos you’d think my initials were ‘c.c.,’" the chief counsel for a major energy company told me. "Finally I had to write a memo and c.c. it to everybody in the office telling them not to c.c. me anymore. Period!"
DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS Lee Iacocca extends the scope of the problem when he points out that many people won’t act until they have all the information. But by the time they get 75 percent of what they thought was needed, the first 15 percent is usually outdated. The key to decision making is that at some point you have to rely on your gut instincts, which causes lots of sleepless nights for people who like to play it safe. Steven Bochco, creator of such megahit TV shows as Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, said that most people in the TV industry test, test, test, relying on mountains of market research and data before making a decision about a new show. He relies on one thing: "instinct." Unfortunately, research shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans (85 percent) are reactive and static, not action- or dynamic- or instinct-oriented. They wait and they meet, meet and wait. With a ready arsenal of conservative, Conventional Wisdom at their disposal, they try to control outcomes in an out-of-control world. Their impulse is to lower the sails and wait out the storm. Regarding the danger of playing it safe and waiting to make decisions, Thomas Watson, Jr., founder and former chairman of IBM, said, "I never varied from the managerial rule that the worst possible thing we could do would be to lie dead in the water with any problem. Solve it, solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without immediate risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business."
CONSENSUS LEADS TO COMPROMISE Play-it-safe decision making seeks consensus and is usually done by committee. In this sense it is a lot like the classic definition of the camel as a "horse put together by committee." Although consensus has a great deal of merit, it can also be a subconscious ruse for playing it safe, for no one taking responsibility. Seeking a "win/win" decision by consensus can result in compromise by identifying the lowest, rather than the highest, common denominator—a no-win for everyone. The hottest innovative idea can become lukewarm when watered down by every committee member and every possible consideration. In many companies, decision by committee is anathema. "In (PepsiCo’s) freewheeling culture, a committee is defined as a ‘dark alley down which ideas are led…to be strangled.’"
TEST, TEST, TEST The conservative mentality at Procter & Gamble, one of the advertising accounts I worked on in the late sixties, was a great example of playing it safe. If we had a new idea for a product, a promotion, a new package, new ad copy, first it would be tested in focus groups, then in three or four test cities around the country, then in a region. Test, test, test…research, research, research—even down to, would you believe, which frame the package or promotion would first appear in the commercial footage. Consequently, if the idea was any good, the competition would know about it before you could roll it out and would beat you to the draw. Recently, however, Procter & Gamble has made some major changes. Reexamining their play-it-safe strategy, they are altering their centralized structure. Demonstrating a new nimbleness, Procter & Gamble now puts products into national distribution after much less market testing than before. This is a big step for a company where in my experience, for years, everyone had to approve ad copy on every brand. With new daring, P&G has been able to reassert itself as the market leader over archrival Colgate-Palmolive.
"IT’S NOT IN THE BUDGET" One of the most common ways managers and executives play it safe is by rigidly adhering to the "numbers." The words, "It’s not in the budget," have probably squelched more innovation than we can count. Relying on the budget to guide decisions, managers don’t have to put themselves on the line, don’t have to take chances. One reason that organizations run "by the numbers" will stagnate in a fast-moving environment is that budgets are usually drawn up far in advance of the period they cover. An annual budget, for instance, is usually finished at least three months before the fiscal year starts, and the planning that created those numbers was done much earlier than that. In a world that is changing by the second, with some products having half lives of less than six months, these numbers and budget forecasts can quickly become outdated and meaningless in the face of unpredictable changes in the marketplace, new competition, or a technological advance. The budget then acts like handcuffs preventing quick response to these unforeseen changes. Not only are budget numbers quickly outdated, but the thinking behind it as well. Jean-Marie Descarpentries, who runs the multibillion-dollar Franco-British CMB Packaging, which has been growing at a rate of 26 percent a year, says, "If your budget is the basis of your play, you content yourself with an extrapolation of the past."
UNDERSPENT DOES NOT MEAN WELL SPENT Donald A. Curtis, a senior partner at a major financial services firm, Deloitte & Touche, goes further. "Reliance on the budget," he says, "is the fundamental flaw in American management." That’s because managers assume that you can manage the business by managing the money. "Wrong," Curtis argues. "Just because a budget was not overspent doesn’t mean it was well spent." Budgets are fine for keeping score, but decisions are being made not on the merit of a new idea or service to the customer but on whether it fits into the budget. And some managers will go to any lengths to make budget, especially if incentive pay is at stake; marginal customers are wooed, prices are cut too deeply, distributors are overloaded with goods. Playing it safe and relying solely on the numbers (many of which are outdated by the time they are used) may seem safe and even pragmatic, but it will prevent you from reacting quickly to the incredibly rapid changes in the marketplace. As 3M CEO Alan Jacobsen says, "I never want to hear anyone put down a project because it isn’t in the budget."
CUTTING AND CHOPPING Here’s another version of playing not to lose: When the going gets tough, cut your losses! Cut budgets, cut costs, cut overhead, cut R&D, cut inventory. Cut, cut, cut. From Apple to Zenith, very few companies were exempt from the cut-and-chop mind-set of the eighties. As a result of this, euphemisms like "downsizing" and "restructuring" crept into the vocabulary of American business. As providence would have it, I picked up my morning paper and saw the following headlines on the front of the business page:
While it seems reasonable to get "leaner and meaner" in more competitive, fast-changing times, remember, you pay a high price for increased automation and just-in-time inventory systems. U.S. productivity "crept up by a scant 1.2% a year on average in the eighties….That’s virtually no improvement from the seventies." All that downsizing did little to up productivity. You want further evidence? Think about this: More than half the 1,468 restructured companies surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management reported that employee productivity either stayed the same or deteriorated after layoffs. If you want employees to love the customer and provide great service, to really make quality job number one, if you want them to be more productive, assume more responsibility, take more risks, and make faster decisions, be wary of the lean-and-mean approach. Seventy-four percent of managers at downsized companies said their workers had lower morale and distrusted management. The "cut-and-chop" mentality creates an environment that "cuts" quality, innovation, and motivation as well. Performance is replaced by conformity, innovation by maintenance of the status quo. Spirit and morale plummet. People are scared and constantly look over their shoulders. The motivation is to keep a job, not to keep improving, to play not to lose rather than play to win. As a result, though you may have cut your costs, you’ve often cut your lifeline as well. Bell & Howell, buffeted by takeover skirmishes and rumors of layoffs, became aware that the resulting "nervousness and gloom cost money." Rumors were spreading faster than voice mail. Their sales reps reportedly spent as much time on the phone, seeking updates of the rumors, as they did in the field selling. Studying sales performance during this period, B&H determined that at least 11 percent of profits—millions of dollars—were lost to the "lean-and-mean blues" of their retained employees.
R&D: THE SOUND OF NO MUSIC Robert S. Miller, Jr., executive vice president of Chrysler Corporation, tells an outlandish but true story that illustrates another down side of downsizing. "A foreign cinema owner decided the movie he was showing was too long, so he decided to cut out what he considered irrelevant. Well, the movie was The Sound of Music. And you know what he did? He cut out all the songs. So help me God, believe it or not, he actually shortened The Sound of Music by cutting out the songs! I figure his version of the movie must have started with the Nazis chasing the von Trapp family up a mountain. And it must have lasted about fifteen minutes." "It was of course an absurd, shortsighted, and unpopular decision, and to you and me, it sounds flat-out, world-class crazy," says Miller. Then he goes on to make a world-class point: "But when you get right down to it, is cutting the songs out of that musical really all that different from, say, cutting R&D out of a company by crippling it with staggering debt in the name of ‘improving shareholder value’?"
THE MUTANT ALIEN ROBOT THAT ATE TOKYO The great director Akira Kirosawa made a series of high-budget box office smashes in the 1950s, the so-called Golden Age of Japanese cinema. But in the 1960s, with the advent of television, audiences decreased. Reacting to dwindling audiences the Japanese film studios began to play it safe. They cut budgets and began cranking out cheap formulaic pictures with titles like The Mutant Alien Robot That Ate Tokyo (that was made up, but you get the picture). The audiences dwindled further, leading to more cuts, more bad films, and more diminishing audiences. And the downhill spiral continued. The industry has only recently turned away from its play-not-to-lose budgeting practices. The cut-cut-cut mind-set is a defensive strategy that stops forward motion.
UW says: By trying to "hold the fort," you often bring the fort down with you.
DEFENSE IS NOT THE BEST OFFENSE Under pressure, peak performers don’t play defensively. When under pressure they take the offensive. "We weren’t making money when I came her," says Jan Carlzon, CEO of Scandinavian Airlines Systems, one who understands when UW says there are many hidden costs to cutting costs. "We were in a desperate situation, and that’s the worst time to focus on preventing mistakes and cutting costs. First we had to increase revenues…Then we could think about cutting costs, because only then would we know which costs could be cut…" Another example of the attitude it takes to win in a competitive environment is provided by McCormick & Co., the largest producers of spices. Faced with profits in 1986 that were no higher than 1981, resulting from changes in consumer habits, many companies would have been tempted to play it safe and make the cuts necessary for short-term improvements to the bottom line. Much like Scandinavian’s Carlzon CEO "Buzz" McCormick, Jr., played to win rather than not to lose. Rather than cutting back in products or people, the company began pouring money into reconstituting itself. "We revitalized our entire retail line, repackaged it, and repromoted it," said the CEO. Because of this, McCormick profits are expected "to keep growing more than 10 percent annually for the next several years." To get and edge these days demands that you be on your edge. You won’t get that edge by being cautious and hesitant. Steffi Graf once said that when the game is on the line, hit harder. In one of my seminars, a manager of a food chain wisely said, "when you play not to lose, you don’t win."
PREPARING NOT TO LOSE "THE BIG GAME" Worrying about losing or making a mistake will often get us to play not to lose. A sales engineer at an IBM conference who had played football for a major collegiate power told me the following story. His team always had the best record in its conference and was usually nationally ranked. But nearly every time they played their conference rival, they lost. "And we always had a better team—on paper at least," he added. "But the coach would always prepare us for the game by yelling, ‘This is the big game! Don’t blow it! Use your heads, don’t make any stupid mistakes! Don’t take any chances! Let’s play our game’" "We’d run out onto the field tense and tight, which is not the way we usually were before a game. We were more concerned about not making mistakes than about winning the game." The coach’s play-not-to-lose attitude actually had predisposed his team to lose. When I was working in advertising, the same type of play-not-to-lose approach often prevailed. "This is a key meeting," the boss would tell us. "Don’t screw up. Don’t offer any new ideas or say anything that we haven’t rehearsed. Just stick to the script." Off we’d go into the meeting, petrified of making a mistake. In fact, we were more concerned about not erring than in performing well and being creative. The resulting tension and stress turned us into robots. We were tentative and hesitant in everything we did; like the football players, by playing not to lose we wouldn’t win. Charles Lynch, the chairman of express delivery company, DHL, and a former international tennis player, once told me that his preparation for a big match or an important meeting would include anticipating all eventualities, including the worst. Thus prepared, before the meeting or the match, the thought of losing never entered his mind. He only focused on what he had to do to win.
UW says: If you are worried about losing, you most likely will. THE HIGH PRICE OF LOWBALLING Combatants in the "cola wars" a few years ago also discovered that lowballing can be a dangerous way to play. Once consumers saw Coke and Pepsi at a "wartime" price, they didn’t see why they should have to pay more after the "cease-fire." It has taken years for these companies to recuperate from the wild promotional prices.
UW says: The price is high for selling low. One of the most common complaints from sales management is that many salespeople play not to lose by "lowballing." They sell price rather than emphasizing value, quality, or service. One owner of a growing business desperately wanted to get the huge Pan Am account for their airline bags and travel kits. As a way to get "in" with the client, she gave them a low price on a lesser item, vinyl passport holders. It was a sizable order, but she didn’t make any profit because her bid was so low. However, she saw it as a "loss leader," a way of getting established as a supplier for Pan Am. When the request for bids for the lucrative airline bag contract were sent out, their company wasn’t even contacted. Asking the Pan Am purchasing agent why she was left out, she was told that he was going to use his old suppliers who were "known" and did high-quality work. But he told her that he would certainly consider her as a future supplier for products like the passport holders and ticket wallets.
PLAYING PRUDENTLY In a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, New York Times Washington bureau chief Hedrick Smith, author of the best-selling book The Washington Power Game, talked about how this play-it-safe strategy affects politics. Because the press makes so much out of scandals, mistakes, and human failings, the prime qualifier for each party, he argues is a safe candidate—one who is overly cautious and doesn’t take bold stances, doesn’t speak out about anything controversial, doesn’t take a stand. Therefore, what we voters get is mediocrity. "leaders" lacking in courage, vision, and passion. The by-product in the 1988 presidential election was the lowest voter turnout in 64 years.
YOU CAN’T PLAY WITHOUT HASSLE Many bosses play not to lose by avoiding confrontations with problem employees, acting as if the problems don’t exist and will improve on their own. They don’t want any hassles or arguments. Yet by avoiding the problem they implicitly reinforce the negative behavior, which of course causes more trouble. Waiting for latecomers to arrive before beginning a meeting is a common example of this desire to keep things copacetic. But waiting and not confronting the latecomers actually honors them and gives the message to others that it’s okay to come late. People then begin assuming the meeting will start 10 minutes later than the advertised time. Then the latecomer comes even later and the vicious cycle continues. I saw this firsthand at a major corporation. No one knew when they should arrive at meetings. The result? Some people stopped coming, others arrived a half hour late. It was chaos. A manager talked to me about a problem employee whose performance was slipping but whom he didn’t want to confront because, "I might turn her off or even lose her if I call her on the carpet." The employee’s behavior was never confronted, but the manager’s ostrich approach did send a message to her and the other employees nonetheless: "There are no repercussions for poor performance, nothing will happen." Eventually, he fired her. Not confronting problems when they arise is like letting weeds go unattended. Pretty soon they get out of control and you have to take extreme measures.
PLAYING FOR KEEPS Tony La Russa, the manager of the world champion Oakland A’s baseball team, says the best advice he ever got was, "Don’t manage to save your job. Manage to win." Describing a situation in which the conventional play-it-safe strategy calls for a bunt. La Russa says sometimes you have to let your hitters swing away. If you bunted and failed you could always say, "I called the right play. My players didn’t execute. But," he says, "the players are aware of the situation. If they see you trying to cover your ass—if you bunt in that situation—they lose respect for you." The bottom line, says La Russa, is "if you’re trying to cover your ass, you won’t be successful."
PLAYING IT SAFE Playing it safe is like body surfing in two feet of water. You may not drown, but you’re also not in deep enough to catch any but the most meager of waves. The most dangerous strategy is to play it safe. In its place, Break-It Thinkers take risks and break rules and challenge convention, making change an ally.
UW says: Playing it safe is dangerous. This article was reprinted with permission from the book "If it ain't broke...BREAK IT!" by Robert J. Kriegel and Louis Patler. Louis Patler is president of the B.I.T. Group, an international training and consulting company based in Marin County, CA that brings "Break-It!" Thinking technologies to corporations, associations, and governments. Dr. Patler, award-winning author, speaker, and former editor of the American Trend Report, lives with his family in Mill Valley, CA. More information can be obtained by contacting Dr. Patler at 415-388-8344.
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