Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Abraham Lincoln is attributed to have famously said “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”  A more recent US President coined a more manipulative spin on Lincoln’s erudite words… “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”  Preying on ignorance is a human trait which, although frowned upon, certainly thrived in history, and definitely thrives today.

Guest Post by Peter Holtmann (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

This article is the eleventh of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.

In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, and we’ve also focused on the importance of communication and consultation, as well as how to set your scope, context and criteria. In this article, we’ll be looking at risk assessments and the role of risk identification, analysis and evaluation in such assessments.