Earlier this week, during a meeting, a colleague looked across the table and said something interesting. “This is bold,” he remarked. “You like risk.”
What made the observation curious was that this was the same person, among the same team, who had previously praised me for being exceptionally risk-averse. Nothing about my temperament had changed. Nothing about my decision-making framework had changed. Yet the moment I revealed the full scale of a plan we had been quietly building towards for almost a decade, the assessment shifted.
Suddenly, I was a risk-taker. So I pushed back.
I explained that timing mattered. The macroeconomic climate mattered. The financial model had been stress-tested. The assumptions had been interrogated. The pathway to execution was difficult, certainly, but visible. Every major question had been accounted for. The uncertainty had not disappeared, but it had been measured.
“This isn’t risky,” I said. “It’s hard, but not risky.”
He listened thoughtfully. Then he called it risky again.
I explained again. After nodding while I was speaking, he repeated himself a third time.
“Still risky!”
At that point, I stopped arguing. Not because I agreed, but because I have developed a habit that functions almost like an internal antivirus system. Whenever someone repeatedly describes me in a way that conflicts with my self-perception, I pause and investigate. Perhaps they see something I do not. Perhaps there is a blind spot. Perhaps there is a bug in the operating system that requires attention before it spreads into larger decisions.
So I sat with the question for a few days. Am I becoming less risk-averse?
The answer, I believe, is no. In fact, I suspect the opposite is true. The confusion arises because we often mistake scale for risk.
A large ambition looks risky from the outside. A significant investment looks risky. A bold strategic move looks risky. But size and risk are not synonymous.
Many of the most dangerous decisions in business are small, familiar and comfortable. They attract little scrutiny precisely because they look ordinary. Equally, some of the safest decisions are those that appear dramatic but have been rigorously analysed beneath the surface.
What people frequently label as risk is often simply difficulty. The distinction matters.
Risk is uncertainty without understanding. Difficulty is understanding exactly what must be done and recognising that it will require effort, discipline and resilience.
A mountain is difficult. A cliff edge is risky.
The difference is that a mountain rewards preparation. The better your training, equipment, planning and execution, the greater your odds of reaching the top. A cliff edge offers no such bargain. The margin for error is so small that even excellence cannot fully protect you from catastrophe.
Difficulty is often reduced by effort. Risk is defined by uncertainty and consequence.
My plan is a mountain, not a cliff edge. It is demanding, but the variables are largely knowable. Success is not guaranteed, but neither is it dependent on luck. The challenge is execution, not survival. We need to put in the work in a timely and diligent manner.
This is a distinction many leaders fail to make. We often admire people who undertake difficult things as though they are inherently courageous. In that case, call me chicken, because as much as I like to work hard, I am a coward when confronted with uncertainty. I don’t like not knowing what I don’t know when it comes to my business. What you guys call bold when you look at me is the result of preparation, calculation, acceptance of the assignment, knowing exactly what the assignment is and executing it over decades.
In reality, some of the boldest-looking decisions are simply the result of careful preparation. Conversely, some of the most reckless decisions appear conservative because they involve doing what has always been done. Familiarity can disguise risk just as effectively as scale can exaggerate it.
This distinction has become increasingly relevant in Ghana’s current economic environment.
The past few years have tested businesses, investors and households alike. Inflationary pressures, currency volatility and shifting consumer behaviour have forced leaders to abandon assumptions that once felt reliable. Planning horizons have shortened. Cash flow has become a strategic concern rather than an accounting metric. Decisions that once seemed straightforward now require layers of analysis.
In such conditions, caution can easily become paralysis.
Many organisations mistake inactivity for prudence. Yet, refusing to move is itself a decision. Waiting indefinitely carries costs. The time value of money does not pause because executives feel uncomfortable. Opportunities decay. Competitive advantages erode. Markets evolve. I am saying I am always on the move. I once had my team wait three years before acting on something they claimed everything was satisfactory with.
The challenge is not to eliminate uncertainty entirely. It is to determine whether uncertainty has been sufficiently understood to justify action. Perhaps this perspective is easier to appreciate in Ghana than elsewhere.
Ours is a country where uncertainty is impossible to ignore. Business leaders have become students of volatility. Entrepreneurs have learned to build despite imperfect conditions. Households have become experts in adaptation.
Yet Ghana also offers countless examples of people succeeding under circumstances that, on paper, appear unfavourable.
Consider the market woman who understands her customers better than any spreadsheet. The entrepreneur who expands only when cash flow allows, building from realised income rather than projected growth. The trader in Walewale who detects shifts in demand before formal indicators register them. Or the farmer who recognises changes in a season before economists recognise changes in a market.
None of these people operate recklessly. Their confidence is rooted in observation, repetition and accumulated experience. What appears risky to an outsider often reflects a depth of understanding that the outsider simply cannot see.
Viewed from a distance, their decisions can look courageous. Viewed up close, they often look obvious. Their success is not the absence of difficulty. It is evidence of alignment.
They are operating in environments that reward their strengths. This is how I spent my last two decades learning to be comfortable with decisions that others describe as ‘bold’.
The same distinction between risk and difficulty explains one of the most productive professional relationships in my career.
My General Manager and I disagree constantly. In reality, it is one of the reasons we move quickly. She interrogates assumptions relentlessly. Rarely does an idea survive first contact unchecked. “Ok, let me think about it and get back to you”. Yet that friction has never slowed us down. We barely feel it. If anything, it has accelerated execution because disagreement, when grounded in a shared objective, creates clarity.
Many organisations confuse consensus with intelligence. They are not the same thing.
A room where everyone immediately agrees is often less effective than one where ideas are tested rigorously before decisions are made.
The strongest bridges endure stress before they carry traffic.
The strongest strategies survive challenge before they enter the market.
My objective is not harmony. I hesitate before typing that I love chaos at the decision table. Because in that chaos, I have more variables to work with. Your silence might contain the clarity I need, so talk! The objective is clarity.
Perhaps that is why my mind drifted beyond business altogether while contemplating his words from earlier this week. The idea also became clearer to me when I stopped thinking about strategy and started thinking about nature.
It is popularly known that fish do not learn to be fish. Birds do not attend flight school. A seed does not receive instruction before becoming a tree. The capability is already embedded within the design. The environment merely creates the conditions for that design to express itself.
Humans are more complicated, but the principle may be similar. We spend a remarkable amount of time treating success as a question of effort when it is often a question of alignment.
Effort matters, of course. Discipline matters. Persistence matters. But effort applied in the wrong direction can produce surprisingly little.
A fish stranded on land can exert enormous energy and still appear untalented. A bird underwater can work harder than every creature around it and still struggle. A seed dropped onto concrete may contain all the potential required to become a fruitful tree, yet never receive the conditions necessary for that potential to emerge.
None of these examples represent failure. They represent misalignment. The same principle applies to people. Many professionals spend years pursuing versions of success that belong to someone else. They chase definitions of achievement borrowed from family expectations, corporate cultures or social prestige. They accumulate credentials, titles and responsibilities only to discover that progress feels unnatural.
Then everything suddenly requires more force than usual. Everything feels heavier than usual. Every achievement seems disproportionately expensive.
What if the issue is not effort? What if the issue is alignment?
In business language, we might call it comparative advantage.
In philosophy, we might call it vocation.
In faith, we might call it calling.
Whatever term one prefers, the principle remains remarkably consistent.
When people operate within the space they were designed to occupy, performance acquires a disproportionately higher quality. Observers often describe it as effortless. The reality is more nuanced.
The effort remains. The setbacks remain. The long hours remain. What disappears is the internal friction. The struggle shifts from identity to execution. The person is no longer trying to become something. They are only becoming more fully themselves, what they already are, like the seed of a Baobab Tree.
This, I think, is where perceptions of risk become distorted.
When observers see someone making a move that appears bold, they evaluate the decision externally. They see scale. They see uncertainty. They see potential downside. What they might not see are the thousands of hours of preparation, analysis and experience informing that decision.
More importantly, they may not see the alignment. To them, the fish is venturing into dangerous waters.
To the fish, it is simply swimming.
Looking back, I understand why my colleague described the plan as risky. He was evaluating the visible scale of the ambition. I was evaluating the invisible depth of the preparation. Twenty years of “let’s wait for the right time” is a long time, and a lot of simulations have played out right in front of our eyes through others who took the step before us.
Neither of us, he nor I, was irrational. We were simply looking at different variables. What appears bold to one person appears obvious to another. Not because one is reckless and the other cautious, but because one observes the surface while the other understands the structure beneath.
That may be the closest thing I have to a definition of purpose. Purpose is not the absence of difficulty. It is the presence of alignment. When that alignment exists, the mountain remains steep. The weather remains unpredictable. The climb remains demanding.
But what others call risk begins to look, from your vantage point, like work worth doing.
Internal audit complete. Back to work!
Thank you for reading. I welcome your reflections, questions, and suggestions for future topics. Subscribe to the ‘Entrepreneur In You’ newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/d-hgCVPy, follow me on all social platforms at @thisisthemax, or get weekly updates via my official WhatsApp channel: www.bit.ly/whatsappthemax.
Wishing you a purposeful and successful week ahead!
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The author, Dr. Maxwell Ampong, serves as the CEO of Maxwell Investments Group. He is also an Honorary Curator at the Ghana National Museum and the Official Business Advisor with Ghana’s largest agricultural trade union under Ghana’s Trade Union Congress (TUC). Founder of WellMax Inclusive Insurance and WellMax Micro-Credit Enterprise, Dr. Ampong writes on relevant economic topics and provides general perspective pieces. ‘Entrepreneur In You’ operates under the auspices of the Africa School of Entrepreneurship, an initiative of Maxwell Investments Group.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, Dr. Maxwell Ampong, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, or beliefs of Maxwell Investments Group or any of its affiliates. Any references to policy or regulation reflect the author’s interpretation and are not intended to represent the formal stance of Maxwell Investments Group. This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. Readers should seek independent advice before making any decisions based on this material. Maxwell Investments Group assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content or for any actions taken based on the information provided.
