Risks are all those things that prevent you from achieving your objectives. If you are a licenced Canadian cannabis producer whose primary activities “relate to cannabis cultivation, processing, production, and distribution” then proactively identifying and treating all the things that…
Superman Risks and Issues
It amuses me listening to people talk about risk management concepts when they don’t understand them. I once attended a meeting of project managers and witnessed a number of these Pretty Mediocre People argue about whether something was a risk…
Thanks for quoting me
I would like to thank all the like-minded people around the world who agree “risk management is about people and processes and not about models and technology” …
SIPOC: How my wife likes her tea
The term SIPOC is an acronym for supplier, input, process, output and customer. It is a process documentation tool that complements a process diagram (boxes and arrows) and helps drive out the important and seemingly nebulous details of a process. Here’s an…
Operational Risk: The Truth Is Out There
With new episodes of 1990s hit series The X-Files airing in January, it got me thinking about the show’s tagline “The Truth Is Out There” and how it applies to the cloak and dagger world of operational risk. The X-Files…
Risk treatment and hockey players
Who wouldn’t want Ryan Callahan on their hockey team? The New York Rangers’ captain isn’t the biggest star in the NHL but ask General Managers and fans throughout the league and everyone would be happy to have him suit up.…
The winding rivers of risk management
In the novel Time and Again by Jack Finney, he writes about Einstein’s theory of time travel this way: “we’re mistaken in our conception of what the past, present, and future really are. We think the past is gone, the…
Risk of a short dead dude
In celebration of La Fête Nationale, Bastille Day, on July 14 here is an example of some poor risk management on the part of the British. The late historian Robert Sobel once noted that the “British created a civil service…
Confessions of a risk manager
My 14-year old son recently bought himself a not-so-inexpensive bike with his own money. On the Monday after the purchase he wanted to take the bike to school. I advised against this as he had a pretty lousy bike lock.…
Campers, risk management and bears (oh my!)
There’s an old joke about two campers that are awakened by a hungry bear. The first guy yells ‘run’ but the second guy stops to put on his running shoes on first. The first guy asks if his companion really…