Last week Ted Coine asked ‘what ever happened to the Common Good?’ At some point people stopped doing the right thing and started putting their individual selfish interests ahead of those of their organizations, countries or kingdoms: UBS, the nation…
Ned Stark. Hand of the King. Chief Risk Officer.
Eddard (Ned) Stark, Lord of Winterfell, is a protagonist in the book A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. He is principled and tells the truth and believes in honour and justice. Ned would make an excellent Chief Risk…
Gladwell, crashing planes and risk management
In his book “Outliers”, author Malcolm Gladwell explains how “The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication” as opposed to mechanical causes. Also, they usually happen after a sequence of mistakes and…
Dan Gardiner, optimism and iceberg risk
Dan Gardner writes in Chapter 3 of his book Future Babble: “Overconfidence is a universal human trait closely related to an equally widespread phenomenon known as ‘optimism bias’.” This overconfidence often leads us to assess our risks poorly. We all…
Riskczar Haiku #1
This is Riskczar’s first risk management-related haikus. Riskczar Haiku #1 A referendum? You really want debt default George Papandreou?
Rant about mobile phones and E. coli
The book Fast Food Nation was one of my favourites when I read it years ago specifically the chapter about the risks of E. coli and the meat packing industry. One of the most memorable quotes I know came from…
Risk management oldies but goodies
The good folks at Riskviews got me thinking about my least read posts. I’ve been doing this for a few years and understand that no one wants to scroll through over 300 blog entries to find some gems from 2006.…
There’s risk in relying on risk managers
Andrew Hill from the Financial Times writes there’s risk in relying on risk managers. He also notes that despite Carsten Kengeter’s assertion: “We will not rest until we have controls that are as watertight as possible”, we all know that…
Risk management is neither the cause nor the solution to UBS’s problems
A headline today on CBC.ca reads “UBS case latest failure of risk management”. I think I will spend the rest of the day being offended by the CBC. (All will be forgiven if Amanda Lang appears on the National tonight.)…