The fine line between risk and prudence

Knowing when to push on and when to pause is key

- Jon Foster-Pedley

(Unsplash)

I have been pondering the relationship between prudence and pushing on in life as well as business.

After many years of not diving, I went diving in the Red Sea. I was cautious, I listened to the experts' advice, I used my dive computer, stayed within the dive and fly limits - and still ended up with decompression sickness.

My brother, who is a master diver living in Australia, laughed when I told him what had happened.

"Why didn't you use your dive tables?" he asked, referring to the old, conservative way of working out the safe time limits between doing multiple dives and properly decompressing the gases that you absorb at depth by the time you fly and, in effect, reverse the physics.

It's a good question. The simple answer is I trusted the technology and ignored my intuition. Irrespective of what happened, it was my fault.

Prudence and pushing on are uneasy bedfellows in life and in business. My father was known as Push-On Pedley during his time as a Spitfire squadron commander during World War 2 - but he was also prudent. He never took risks that were not properly calculated, and he always put the welfare of his pilots front and centre of everything that he did.