The visual above is funny because it captures something painfully true about business.

“Good news! We removed all the risk from our exciting new growth plan.”

“How?”

“By not doing it.”

Every MFD wants to grow. But growth, by definition, requires us to do something today whose outcome we cannot know with certainty.

Hiring the next person carries risk. Opening another office carries risk. Investing in technology carries risk. Building a second line of leadership carries risk. Spending on marketing before knowing exactly what it will produce carries risk. Delegating important client relationships carries risk. Entering a new market carries risk.

Therefore, we analyze…Then we analyze some more.

Sometimes we become so good at identifying everything that could go wrong that doing nothing begins to look like the intelligent decision.

As you can see, there is a problem with this approach… Doing nothing has risk too.

Your best people may leave because they cannot see growth. Clients may gradually expect capabilities you never built. Competitors may become stronger. Technology may change the economics of your business. The founder may become the bottleneck. A few years later, you may discover that the decision that felt safest was the riskiest one.

We usually measure the risk of action. We rarely measure the risk of inaction.

Of course, this is not an argument for reckless expansion. Every growth decision deserves thought, numbers, judgement and preparation. However, there is no spreadsheet that can remove uncertainty from entrepreneurship.

At some point, you need to move.

The objective is not to eliminate risk before acting. It is to take intelligent risks that your business can survive, learn from them quickly and keep moving forward.

The only completely risk-free growth strategy is the one in the cartoon.

Don’t grow… Don’t experiment… Don’t invest… Don’t change.

Eventually, don’t have much of a business left to protect.

Growth has a price but standing still has one too.