When facing critical decisions, embracing creative risks can lead to innovation and growth. Taking calculated risks often opens doors to new opportunities and solutions that wouldn't emerge from a conservative approach. It fosters a culture of experimentation, encouraging teams to think outside the box and challenge the status quo. However, balancing these risks with a secure foundation is essential. Assessing potential downsides helps mitigate negative impacts while still allowing for bold moves. Ultimately, the key lies in finding a middle ground—encouraging creativity while maintaining a safety net to safeguard against significant failures, ensuring sustainable progress.

Weigh the potential impact and align the decision with long-term goals, considering how the creative risk could drive innovation while balancing the need for stability.

Whether to take a creative risk or play it safe depends 100% on your internalized reasons for the decision. If you are motivated by money, fame, power, or prestige -- play it safe. But if your reason for a creative risk is to strengthen the well-being of the team, improve the lives of your employees, be more inclusive and respectful, or to trust the feedback you've received from people who aren't often listened to in your organization -- always take the creative risk when it is in their favor. At the end of the day: You have to answer to God, and so does your boss or funder. Sleep with a clean conscience. Do the right thing. You know in your heart what that is. Be still, and listen.

Take the creative risk—because in a world of safe choices, boldness stands out. Playing it safe is often the riskiest move of all. The real question is, what do you stand to lose by being predictable? Lean into the uncertainty, because great work isn’t born from following the herd—it’s about surprising it.