It’s March. Chances are there’s an NCAA men’s basketball tournament pool being conducted in your office right now. If you’re in it, good luck! There are a number of them here in our office. (You want to see my picks click here.) It’s estimated that $2.5 billion changes hands over this single event. That’s quite the tidy sum.
So if you’re like me, you printed out a copy of the tournament brackets and assessed the teams involved in this year’s competition. With 68 teams in the tournament, there’s plenty to think about. You must consider a team’s ability to score, play defense, and rebound. It’s prudent to think about their strength of schedule, experience, the coach’s ability, and how they finished the regular season. You might want to do some research to find out what the “experts” are saying about the various teams. But with 68 of them to consider, it’s unlikely you have a lot of first-hand knowledge about most of the teams in the tournament.
But that doesn’t stop you from wading into the bracket and confidently picking the winners of each game. By my unofficial count, 67 games will be played in the tournament before a champion is crowned. That leaves you with 67 decisions to make in order to pick the winner. No simple task. In fact, I read that the odds of picking every game correctly are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That’s nine quintillion to one! Good luck!
But just because there’s almost no chance you’ll be perfect, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try. It can be fun to test your knowledge and your luck. It makes for interesting watercooler banter and, who knows, maybe you’ll win a few bucks.
Business is like the process of filling out your tournament bracket. There are many decisions you must make to be successful. You must carefully assess the choices. You should do your homework and consider carefully all your options before you make your selections. Then, with the information you have, you make your picks. If you’re good at what you do, more of your choices will work than fail, but you’ll never be perfect. In fact, your chances of being perfect at work are far less than the odds of picking the perfect bracket. But with some hard work, sound judgment and a little luck — don’t ever underestimate luck — you’ll do pretty well.
But to have a chance to win, you have to get in the game. I’ve never seen anyone win the office pool without first filling out a bracket. The same is true in business, you need to get in the game. You need to be willing to take some risks. You need to make some choices. You need to place your bets.
I heard William Shatner interviewed the other day and he was asked about a speech he gave as Captain James T. Kirk in one of the first episodes of Star Trek. Now I must admit, I’m no Trekkie. In fact, Star Trek debuted the same year I was born. But the speech being discussed was one in which Captain Kirk was trying to convince his team of the opportunity before them as they explored another galaxy. In this speech, Kirk talks about how risk is necessary for human advancement and says to his crew “risk is our business.”
Risk is your business. It’s everyone’s business. If you work in any business, for-profit or non-profit, you take risks every day. And unless you own the place, whether it’s investors or donors, you’re placing bets with someone else’s money. And your job, ultimately, is to help make the most of the money that has been entrusted to the organization. Your job is to get a return on that investment.
You don’t get a return on investment by hiding the money under a mattress. To get a return, you must place your bets. You must get in the game. And the better you are at making bets, the better the chances of a positive outcome. You’re never going to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean you can’t win.