Great Leaders Take Big Risks

When protecting your people and your mission matters more than certainty

As seen in Inc. Magazine

Every founder fantasizes about the moment someone offers to buy their company for life-changing money. Most dream about the moment and assume they’ll say yes, of course, without hesitation. But real leadership often demands the opposite reflex—the courage to decline immediate certainty in pursuit of longer-term purpose.

In other words, the greatest leadership requires the willingness (and even eagerness) to understand and abide by high risk.

I recently wrote and published my first book, Risk-Taking is Biblical. It outlines my path and role at the helm of a faith-based company. To understand what that entails, you’ll need to read the book, which offers a complete guide for creating and managing this type of organization.

But regardless of religious faith, I hold strongly that at the core of every successful company and leader lies a full understanding and respect for the role of risk.

Why I declined the offer

In my own story, after military service, university training, and years in a corporate setting, I entered the entrepreneurial realm with an engineering team that somewhat quickly arrived at that magic moment so many founders dream of: I received a buyout offer that would have created generational wealth.

Yes, I was honored. Yes, it validated the value of what my team had created.

But as I looked deeper, I realized that while I’d benefit greatly, the other 17 members of my team would then be co-opted by contract into a corporate setting that was not of their choosing and that would limit, at least for a time, their ability to choose other jobs. In essence, I would be selling my friends to the highest bidder.

It wasn’t a simple decision. Even my own father, when he saw the offer, suggested I take it.

I turned it down, not because a better offer existed (it didn’t) or because new customers were lined up (they weren’t). All 17 of my team supported my decision, even though it meant we were walking away with a client list of zero and only $100,000 in the bank.

The result has not been painless. But eight years later, my team has grown to lead a company with even greater outcomes for all of us. We’ve also opened the Chang Robotics Fund, which has spawned eight additional high-innovation companies, some led by members of our original team.

My decision to decline the offer was guided by the following five principles.

1. Risk is not recklessness. It’s responsible vision.

Smart risk-taking is not impulsive. It is disciplined judgment. It is based on choosing long-term potential over short-term security. Likewise, the calculation isn’t financial alone. It’s also based on mission, timing, team conviction, and purpose alignment.

For example, if the business model creates significant innovation and opportunity for the core team (and for the clients you can help innovate), can that same model create multiple high-innovation outcomes for other markets and applications? If so, your methods can create multiple companies, affect multiple industries, and create multiple leaders, all capable of achieving generational wealth. Collectively, your efforts can change the entire nation, or even the world.

2. Employees follow leaders who bet on the future.

Seventeen employees backed my decision, even though it offered nearly zero job security in the immediate term. That kind of unity doesn’t happen by accident. It is earned by teams who can commit fully when their leaders model courage, conviction, and faith.

3. The hardest risks shape the strongest cultures.

Companies that avoid risk become brittle. Their products (and their methods) are quickly outdated. Their markets shift while they cling to notions of “safety” rather than taking bold steps. Companies that embrace risk build cultures of resilience, innovation, and loyalty. Smart risk becomes a part of their very identity.

4. Risk creates outcomes that only exist if you’re willing to wait.

In my case, declining the buyout that seemed obvious preserved the path for later breakthroughs in healthcare automation, food safety, supply chain innovation, and entirely new categories of robotics. Without the willingness to take risks, I’m sure our team’s members still would have achieved great things, but none of the even greater “changing the world” solutions would have existed, or at least not from us.

5. Risk is a leadership lesson.

In uncertain markets, safe choices feel comforting. But the purpose of leadership isn’t to avoid risk. It’s the willingness to step forward and take the right risks, even in cases where you have no idea what the other end of the equation will offer.

Tariffs, natural disasters, shifting geopolitical conditions. All these elements may influence the details of your creation. But the strongest leaders and teams are willing to follow the even greater agenda of changing the world for the better (while growing themselves and their team in the process). Sometimes the boldest move is your willingness to believe and know you can build the things the world needs most that nobody else is offering.

Closing thoughts

The risk my team took with me in 2017 has been far from our only adventure. While the work came quickly, market conditions have imposed risks upon us that have tested us to our core. In 2022, projects from a top U.S. company were suddenly postponed, leaving our cash flow so depleted we nearly went out of business.

We’ve looked closely at acquisitions or mergers with other analogous companies. Some make sense—some do not—but our willingness to act boldly has led to great outcomes in nearly every case. A close friend of mine who chose to go forward with an acquisition offer and exit his business faced yet another risk when the business struggled to thrive without him under its new leaders. He bought the company back and is leading it to high success once again.

In each of these cases, these five principles hold true: Risk is responsible vision. Employees follow leaders who bet on the future. Risk requires patience and rewards the leaders who are willing to wait. And in every experience, risk continues to provide great leaders with additional lessons.

These are the principles that will guide my own leadership actions for the rest of my life. Yes, other extremely attractive offers have come my way since the deal I declined in 2017. If my team was in favor of moving forward with me, perhaps we’d move forward. More probable is that our business would take the step of acquiring others, to protect the culture of risk taking and of showing up that has allowed us to thrive.

But in any case, the wise and essential aspects of risk will serve as our ultimate guide.

For insights like this and more, follow Chang Robotics on LinkedIn.