In large organisations, there are dynamics and processes designed to minimise risk. Predictability is preferred over the alpha in many decisions.
As a manager or leader, are you confident that most decisions and initiatives you took will definitely work? Based on your intuition or data, you feel comfortable with the levers you are pulling? Confident they will deliver impact?
If everything is perfectly comfortable, then you are probably not doing anything with significantly higher potential upside. You are not taking enough risk. Your choices are in the normal statistical range. Where is the alpha going to come from?
As a manager or leader, you have the knowledge, the experience, the support of the organisation. If you don't create the alpha, who else will?
Wrote this while reflecting on an initiative that still gives me a tingling feeling of uncertainty. But if it works, we can move things by a significant margin.