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What do you think is the #1 business risk in 2018 according to the World Economic Forum?
Guess again? [Read more…]
There is a huge fear around the globe that:
The Machines Are Coming!
How much is this reality, fear, or over hype?
Upcoming Machine and robot wars are posed this way.
The machines are fully functional robots that can out-think and out-do all humans. Where has this fantasy been created? TV. Movies. Books. And frankly most media make a robot a villain who kills and takes over humanity.
Now, they are seen as job killers and we all need to be afraid.
So, what’s going on? This is: Part myth. Part reality. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
We live in a competitive environment and business generates the money that makes the world go round, or at least should do. Money is the medium of exchange for goods and services and allows society as we know it and the global economy to function.
Those who have money engage those who want money to provide them with products or services and this is done through contracts. Contracts are awarded at a price that the person who has the money (the Client) is prepared to pay and ‘the winner’ is typically the lowest compliant bid.
If compliance isn’t met then there is suffering somewhere. It can be the Client, the Bidder, the end user or all three and on Government projects it’s the taxpayer who, inevitably, pays. [Read more…]
Transparent vulnerabilities are so obvious that they are easily overlooked; they are the ones we:
Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin; for if there were no tomorrow, there would be no risk. Growing government intervention in the private sector therefore becomes a transparent vulnerability that we have not accounted for in our identification of vulnerabilities. Time transforms risk. The nature of risk is shaped by our time horizon. In order to achieve corporate goals and objectives time horizons are established few take into account government actions. [Read more…]
Guest Post by James Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
When Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is advocated, it often seems like it is the end all and be all. However, this is not true. It is a methodology which assists management in identifying the risk that can prevent an organization from accomplishing it desired goals. As such, it should be viewed as another management tool in a range of tools. Perhaps the best presentation of this idea, for local government, is from the city of Oshawa Canada. This piece discusses how it has integrated ERM into it continuous improvement process. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Greg Caroll (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
So why don’t most Enterprise Risk Management system work? Simply, they don’t “manage” risk, they just record it. Manage is a verb not a noun. It is activity not an item. Making a list might be adequate for those who want to check off regulatory compliance, but it’s does not produce a ROI. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Joseph Paris (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
There are all manner of problems (being an optimist, I rather use the term “challenge”) that we face each and every day.
Most of these challenges are simple enough: what’s for dinner this eve; is there traffic on the highway that is going to impede my progress; do I have any clean underwear, and so on. Some challenges are more complex; how are we going to meet our production schedule; my primary vendor has failed and I need to bring a replacement on-line; which automobile or house should I purchase and what are the financing options, etc…
Then there are “wicked problems”. [Read more…]
The post-crisis recovery phase is one of the least addressed in planning, training and simulations. This is an area that, if not properly managed, can cost financially, reputationally and operationally. Communications, internal and external are, at best, misjudged. Guidelines for recovery are lacking and most entities lose focus when it comes to discussing recovery operations. It may be that recovery is one of the most complicated of the lifecycle elements and that no two recoveries are going to follow the same pattern.
However, the recovery process can be segmented into manageable bits that can be undertaken using a project management approach. [Read more…]
Albert Einstein once said that … “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you find yourself doing a root cause analysis on the same problem repeatedly, it may be time to revisit the root cause analysis from a framework point of view rather than as a tool. In this article, I will review an example of root cause analysis as a risk management framework. This is different than examining one of the tools or processes you use for troubleshooting a problem.
There are several root cause analysis frameworks that you may come across. In my research, the top five root cause analysis frameworks related to healthcare are from the:
I was supposed to be in Boston presenting at “The Disaster Conferences” a few years ago on 28 January 2015. Well, the weather just put us out to 19 March 2015 for the now, rescheduled Boston conference. I guess that they are still feeling the effects of this week’s blizzard, now named “Juno”; that left Boston with over 24 inches of snow.
According to the Weather Channel Winter Storm Juno pounded locations from Long Island to New England with heavy snow, high winds and coastal flooding late Monday into Tuesday. The storm is now winding down. The National Weather Service has dropped all winter storm and blizzard warnings for Juno.
Guest Post by Joseph Paris (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Nobody likes to fail. Failing causes us embarrassment. Failing bruises our ego. Failing might be a dark spot on our performance assessments. All we have to do is reflect on our childhood for when we failed and how poorly we felt. Even if our parents did give us encouragement, we still felt bad about failing. Let’s face it – failing sucks. [Read more…]
Guest Post by John Ayers (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Eloquence has many definitions primarily applied to speaking and writing. One definition is the art or practice of using fluent, forceful, and persuasive discourse. Over the ages, authors have variously described eloquence as “words sweetly placed and modestly directed” (William Shakespeare), “a painting of thought” (Blaise Pascal), “the poetry of prose” (William Cullen Bryant), “the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy” (Ralph Waldo Emerson), and “the art of clothing the thought in apt, significant and sounding words” (John Dryden).
I think many of these words describing eloquence can also be applied to product design. Some examples and rational are presented below. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Greg Caroll (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
There is a gaggle of Management Consultants pushing the 20th century mantra of Good Management Practice as a panacea to all the ill of today’s business environment. The key plank in most of these methodologies is that old chestnut “the PDCA cycle” for Continuous Improvement. If your consultant wears this as a badge, run a mile
Business Management is no longer just about Financial Accounting or Office Administration. And Best Practice is not just someone’s vague opinion. Leading businesses from around the world have, thru the international standards organization, put down a comprehensive set of guidelines for a broad range of Systems Management areas covering the lifecycle management Best Practices. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Good intentions do not make for the creation of a robust/resilient organization. Business Continuity plans, Disaster Recovery plans, Emergency Response plans, etc., that are standalone documents generally reflect good intentions – whether to meet regulatory requirements or to address governance. I would have to say that this should be a wake-up call for executives in all industries. We live in a complex and interdependent world. Complex systems are full of interdependencies that are hard to detect. The result is nonlinearity in responses to events, especially random events/shocks.
The odds of rare events are simply not computable. Model error swells when it comes to small probabilities. The rarer the event; the less tractable, and the less we know about how frequent its occurrence. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Jim Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
A predictable surprise is a risk event that in some form is known within the organization. It is of a nature that if left unresolved, it could be costly. But fixing the problem appears to have larger short run costs, than long term benefits. The Volkswagen diesel emissions fraud is one such example. It also a case where the penalties imposed outweighed the short term costs. Moreover, had a risk assessment occurred at several points along the way, there might not have been a scandal. [Read more…]
