I’m off to Virginia Beach later this month so it seemed fitting that today’s post has a beach theme. This quote comes from Chapter 7 of Nathan Englander’s book “The Ministry of Special Cases” and you should remember these words whenever…
Don’t make fun of risk management
There’s an intersection in my neighbourhood that makes me nervous to drive through. Imagine a quiet suburban street that goes north-south which intersects the east-west streets that only have stop signs. I’ve observed that frequently cars travelling east-west roll…
Bear risk management
My lovely wife wants to take me camping next weekend. I’ve never been camping but understand camping was a part of her life before we met. I’ve explained that I am not averse to camping despite the dirt, cold, sleeping…
Risk management and cognitive biases
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of putting many people in a room to discuss and assess risks you’d know that not everyone assesses every risk the same way. To some a particular risk is high, while to others it…
Passwords, LinkedIn and the White Rabbit
With the news this morning that your eHarmony or LinkedIn password was posted on a Russian website, people are frantically changing their passwords today. Or so one hopes. Why all the urgency? Should anyone be concerned that some troublemakers are going…
Under the Dome risk management
In Stephen King’s novel, Under the Dome, a small town in Maine becomes suddenly cut off from the outside world by “an invisible barrier of unknown origin”. If that sounds a bit too much like the Simpsons Movie or…
The Great Plague of London and root causes of risk
One of the hardest parts in documenting your risks is figuring out the root cause of the risk being analyzed. If this is done poorly, we will spend time and money treating the wrong root causes and the risk may…
The Walking Dead and risk management
If there are two things you have noticed about this blog, I often write about zombies and the Moment of Risk Enlightenment. Today’s post combines both. (Note: This post contains spoilers about season two of the Walking Dead.) I was…
How to Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich: Henry Blodget
A website dedicated to the popular show Lost published a post a while back about how each of the characters on the show would make a peanut butter and jam sandwich. I have borrowed this idea to illustrate how some finance or…
The black swans and Field of Dreams
Yesterday I wrote about a white paper “Black Swans Turn Grey” from PwC. Here’s a footnote to that post. I had a good chuckle when I read about these “new black swan risks”. The authors suggest that all these…