The Positive Effect of Daring (to be crazy)

How often have you thought to yourself: “I can’t do that, because people will think...” Add anything you like, but most of the time it will be something like “…that I’m crazy”. Recently, I watched a Ted Talk by Cassandra Cole, a young female mechanical engineering student. She is the team lead of the school’s Formula SAE team. Initially, Cassandra was afraid to join the team, as it consisted only of men and she was concerned people would label her as crazy if she joined. It took a near-death experience for her to decide to pluck up the courage and join this racing team. To her, this action was something truly crazy. Once having joined the team, she became hugely successful and is now working part-time for NASCAR, pursuing her dream job as a Race Engineer.

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I believe that women should be taking many more of these crazy risks. Men, in comparison to women, do not hesitate as much when making risky decisions.

I have made an experience of my own to prove the positive effect of bold and “crazy” actions.

During my first two years of university, I was part of a student organization hosting and organizing Germany’s largest consulting competitions for students at our university’s campus. In the entire six years of history of the organization, there had never been a female patron. I was determined to change this. My teammates’ reaction was not at all what I expected: they laughed and said that was a strange thing to want to change. Why bother, when it would obviously be significantly harder to find a high-ranked female businessperson to be the patron of our event? This made me even more determined to find someone.

And I did. After many rejections, I found our first female patron, the head of Human Resources at Germany’s largest market research company, Doris Lainer.

In the course of issuing invitation letters, I had also inquired if Martina Koederitz, the CEO of IBM Germany, could take on this position. Unfortunately, her busy schedule did not allow her to be our event’s patron. 

However, at the recent event, she was the patron of the consulting competition!

By taking a risk and doing something crazy like initiating female patrons for our event, I have made a change and encouraged my successors in the organization to do the same. The result was winning one of Germany’s most powerful businesswomen as our patron. By taking a bold action, you can trigger a positive effect for many more women to come. 

Annamarie