How to develop better risk-taking.

According to legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, “an essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.”

At the end of the day developing an artistic mind is about engaging the risk of exposing yourself while you are still learning. Exposing yourself to silence, critique, experimentation, and failure collaboration demands. Exposing yourself to the risk that you might not find the answer. Exposing yourself to the opportunity of flow and sublime illumination. Author and teacher George Sanders describes the act of creative risk-taking by saying:

“we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs—or doesn’t occur—in that instant. What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we “know” something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple. But the “knowing” at such moments, though happening without language, is real. I’d say this is what art is for: to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it’s superior to our usual (conceptual, reductive) way.”

Business strategist and author Kathleen J. McInnis simplifies Saunder’s point by saying, “Knowledge without imagination can tell you where you are but not where to go.” 

At this moment in history when we know enough to know we don’t know what’s next, unleashing the imagination of people toward the problems of a company is a strategic move, but it’s also risky. A lot of people aren’t used to taking risks at work; and developing their artistic mindset increases comfort with ambiguity and positive attitudes when inevitable failures arrive.