risk informed decision making

Math is not my strong suit. I feel more at ease at the keyboard, weaving words together. That’s not to say I’m terrible at math. In fact, I passed a rigorous calculus course in high school, and I actually enjoyed business statistics. But those days are in the distant past, and I rarely have occasion…

Resources – whether they are time, financial, human, or natural – are limited. You only have so many hours in the day or only so much money, which is why all of us prioritize our activities for the day or how much money to spend. The same process we subtly do each day is definitely…

In both my experience and according to a white paper from PwC, a common ERM challenge is how an annual risk review becomes a check-the-box activity. It shouldn’t be this way… Regardless of the reasons, everyone from executives all the way down to entry-level managers and employees have enough “bureaucratic” burdens as it is. An…

Picture this – you’re planning a road trip and map out your route. You identify places you want to visit, eat, and stay along the way. When it comes time to actually hit the road though, you put on a blindfold and start driving in the direction you think you should be going. Now I…

Have you ever been in the room when someone suggested doing scenario analysis? Did you see everyone in the room cringe at the thought? I have, and I felt pity for the person who made the suggestion. Most likely, everyone in that room has gone through the endless “what if” scenario analysis that takes 4…

When I started my consulting firm in August 2016, I knew I wanted to help organizations perform better by using enterprise risk management (ERM) instead of just traditional risk management. After all, I know how well ERM can work when done right and how much the organization can benefit from it. But as a start-up,…

Most organizations, if not all, have some level of operational risk management. For example, some organizations are focused on operational risk related to safety or contract oversight of vendors. But a common view of operational risk management is slightly broader by examining risks associated with the actual daily operations of the organization. Examples include understanding…

As noted in last week’s blog on freeing up in-house ERM resources, your organization has probably experienced a substantial increase in the volume and complexity of risks over the past five years, and yet you have insufficient resources to strengthen your ERM processes to manage these new threats. These statistics from NC State’s report, The…

As the person representing ERM at your organization, reputation risk is likely at the top of the list of concerns. You bring it up frequently with people across the organization and have tried to figure out how in the world to include it in your risk assessments. I know…because I struggled with this same thing.…

One of my recent articles, 8 Possible Consequences of Not Being Proactive in Risk Management, discussed possible ramifications for companies who do not factor risks into decision making. Two of those consequences, product failure and profit/financial loss, came to the forefront of my mind when reading an article from the Wall Street Journal about how…