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…
My appetite for risk and cheesecake
On a trip to Portugal and Spain last month, my brother elected to take a minor detour and visited Morocco in the midst of “a revolution sweeping the Arab world” as he wrote on his blog. He was monitoring the…
Baseball and risk management
One day we will send a man to the moon and bring him home safely. One day we will elect a black President. One day the Montreal Expos will win a World Series. One day we will drive flying cars…
What Israel can teach us about managing risk
This article appeared in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2009. While we are holding people up at airports and making them throw out bottles of mouthwash and shampoo, the Israelis seem to have figured out how to manage their…
Twilight risk management
With New Moon, the second installment of the Twilight movie saga set to come out this week, I thought I would examine four types of risk treatments from the Edward Cullen point of view. They are ACCEPT, AVOID, TRANSFER and…
Risk managers are like janitors
This is a bit of a re-post but it seems appropriate following a comment I received earlier where the reader asks: “How can you convince a small business owner to invest resources into something that they cannot see a value…
More ERM at colleges and universities
On September 8, 2009, I published some thought leadership from PwC about ERM in colleges and universities. Today I came across a 2009 survey conducted by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges and United Educators about the…
Monty Python on governance, risk, and compliance
I read too much about what GRC needs or what ERM needs but far too often suggestions read like my favourite Monty Python skit (a lot of easier said than done steps): Alan Well, last week we showed you how…