CERM® Risk Insights

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

Project documentation; the bane of some people’s lives, for other’s their raison d’être.  Documentation is essential and its written word can ensure effective communication so there is as little misunderstanding as possible.  Requirements will be definitive, obligations and liabilities will be unambiguous, and instructions will be clear.

Projects typically require plans and processes as well as details of products and services and methodologies for contemporaneous purposes.  They contribute to corporate knowledge, assist with learning lessons and may defend any liability.  Documents are usually subject to some form of acceptance, approval, non-objection or similar.

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Is climate change humanity’s greatest ever risk management failure?
The Guardian newspaper

Climate change. Global warming. These are the ‘new normal’ or the ultimate ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’. U.S. intelligence report said:

“Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

Read more: Climate Change or Global Extinction?

Risk likelihoods as well as direct risk consequences are increasing. Extreme heat is impacting global food supply chains, housing near the ocean, increases in cancer, and other factors.

Are you a denier? According to a recent report, there’s a 95% likelihood that VUCANs are the drivers of climate change through carbon dioxide emission.

OK, is human extinction too strong of a prediction? The New York Times said:

“Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival .”

Story: You may be a green believer or even an evangelist. Or, you may be a denier. It really doesn’t matter.

We’re in a global heating environment and changing political environment. So, pay attention to sustainability. I was a green skeptic until I saw first-hand major environmental changes occurring over a few years. I catch & release salmon on the Columbia River in Oregon, USA., which is a beautiful and pristine environment. The problem is over the last 30 years, salmon fishing changed. Fewer fish. Smaller fish. Shorter fishing season. Not good. As an engineer, I thought maybe we were going through a macro weather cycle from cold to warm.

Work Lesson Earned: Climate is now directly tied to work and salaries. More people see climate change impacting job retention, promotional opportunities, and recruitment. A recent survey concluded 74% of executives say climate change poses risks to their job security.  How does climate change impact or may impact your work? Are there any opportunities for you? As traditional industries adapt to the changing environment, have you considered working in a green business? You’re saving humankind. You’re having fun. You’re doing good. You’re saving the planet.

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

Healthy organisations create an environment where organisational members have mutual trust and respect for each other, especially in terms of how they decide and implement decisions. They create an environment in which organisational members are empowered to deal with their problems and where problems can be identified, discussed, and solved with mutual trust and respect through cooperation and communication amongst themselves.

When there is mutual trust and respect, there will be more teamwork and collaboration. This constructive and collaborative culture will generate a positive ‘risk culture’ and a collaborative approach to risk management. It builds a higher level of risk maturity for the organisation.

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

There are two mindsets surrounding the concepts of transformation and change. First, there is fear that comes with transformation and change. The feeling of not having control over something in your personal or professional life can be daunting, because it leaves us feeling helpless. And the second mindset is an apathetic, hands-off one. This is where the concepts of transformation and change seem so insurmountable that we accept them passively.

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Eighty-five (85%) of the jobs today’s students will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.
Institute for the Future

Now, let’s look at university graduates’ marketability? Why are so many Gen-Zer’s and millennials unemployed or simply underemployed? One major reason is many recent college graduates are simply not prepared for work. They are not FOW-ready or work-ready. Gartner, the consulting organization, said:

“Only 20 percent of employees have the skills needed for both their current role and their future career”.

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

Many larger companies have three critically important operations: organizational sustainability, procurement, and supply chain management.   IN most companies, these operations are managed separate from each other, and their operations are not directly influenced by international standards.

Organizational sustainability works to improve all the operations of the company. However, these operations are managed internal to the organization. There may be a sustainability plan for the organization, but it is not used in all facilities or in the same manner for many of the facilities.  The corporate sustainability program creates its own program based on how the sustainability manager works with operations.  This will be coming to an end as the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is preparing to release mandatory reporting to provide information to the capital markets.

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If colleges were businesses they would be right for hostile takeovers, complete with serious costcutting and painful reorganizations.
US News and World Report

COVID has forced universities to do online teaching. What’s the value add of spending $70K (USD) for online instruction, when you paid for sports, in-class instruction, and the college experience? In 2021 and 2022, we’ll find out as university students who have been taught online for a year or even longer.

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

In September 2022 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued NIST IR 8286C. (1) As the C indicates, this is the third such cybersecurity risk management standard issued by NIST. NISTIR 8286A and 8286B provide guidance to stakeholders on assessing and managing cybersecurity risk in conjunction with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) processes. This piece looks at the guidance provided under NIST IR 8286C.

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

My first job after college was with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) at which time in the 1960’s the chemical process industries far outstripped that of the rest of the manufacturing industries.

My second job was as a pioneer in the development of the North Sea, the expansion in search for oil and gas, leading in time to petroleum refining, the most hazardous of all offshore rolls at the time, was hookups, which is building the field, which was developed by a single central combined drilling and production platform.

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

Video Killed the Radio Star…went the 1979 music video byThe Buggles.  MTV used this as their first ever video in 1981, but despite the prophecy and MTV’s 40 ongoing years, radio stars aren’t dead.  Radio revolutionised popular music, vinyl discs gave us today’s disc jockeys but even though technology evolves it demonstrates that the fittest will survive and not everything will be killed.

Compact cassette started to challenge vinyl in 1963.  With the emergence of CDs in the mid ‘80’s, tapes eventually became old-hat.  CDs were ousted by flash drives and today ubiquitous access to downloads overshadow almost everything…but vinyl and tapes aren’t altogether dead and buried.  People can be branded dinosaurs but sometimes they are just nostalgic; the odd scratch can make music more of a memorable memory…as does listening to cricket or baseball or horse-racing on the radio!

But it’s not just music that’s been influenced by technology.  Meetings have also been affected and, with the advent of COVID more and more of us are being exposed to on-line meetings and, of course presentations.  But how effective are some presentations in blending audiovisual media, the spoken word and that most important ingredient, people.

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

The ability of machines to communicate—and their increasing intelligence—is an exponentially accelerating trend spanning many industries. This technology trend is not slowing down in any way, and the more it is adopted, the more it will continue to accelerate, transforming our personal, professional, and social lives.

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How Tech Can Turn Doctors into Clerical Workers
Title of New York Times Article

I bounced the above article among several of my doc buddies. The conversation went like: “You spent 10 years going to med school. Now, you push paper. And, BTW: you may be replaced by a robot. Huh. Yeah. Well. ….”

Not good for one of the most respected professions. But, an undisputable sign of concern among one of the most lucrative and respected professions during the COVID pandemic. It’s all about medical disruption.

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

Evacuation management is a necessary element of safety planning for oil and gas operations. It is critical to be prepared to evacuate personnel quickly and safely in the event of an emergency, as every second counts when lives are on the line. Evacuation drills and preparation exercises can be disruptive and time-consuming.

However, the overhead costs and lost productivity expended in preparation for emergency scenarios have become accepted as unavoidable costs of doing business. That’s because until now, there hasn’t been an efficient way to manage and improve evacuation drills while still adequately preparing team members for real emergencies. [Read more…]

Because of the nature of Moore’s law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.
John Carmack – Software Engineer

A number of years ago, several of us at Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) wondered what are the people  implications of what is commonly called Moore’s Law. The 2020 edition of this book (pre-COVID) focused on AI and technology disruption.

Story: Gordon Moore was one of the founders of Intel Corporation. Moore’s Law states the number of transistors that can fit into a computer chip doubles every 18 months to two years. Moore’s Law expanded to include any tech area where the rate of change doubles in two years or costs half as much.

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

Organisations are systems that consist of sub-systems like sales and production. Change impacts the organisational system and subsystems in different ways and speeds – sales may react quickly to the changing external environment, but production may take time to change the process. Unfortunately, people are the hardest to change.

When organisational subsystems change at different speeds caused by external changes, it creates gaps or cracks in the system. This is where the system gets disintegrated.

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