CERM® Risk Insights

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

Mental Health Awareness week is fast approaching. This year [2022] it is from 9th-15th May, and the theme is Loneliness, Anna Neagle is right, in her book Cultivating and being happy in our own company is important, but even the most introverted among us benefit from human connection and where increasingly people have started working from home, or in a hybrid home/workplace setting, we need to proactively seek that connection out.  Connection can be with our close circle, or even from small talk with strangers the research shows that both are helpful for our well-being. [Read more…]

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

“Department of Defense (D0D) acquisition must improve program while working within budgetary constraints. The DoD community shows an interest in utilizing Agile methodologies, but struggles to reap Agile’s benefits. They encountered challenges including the historically built-up processes that enforce heavy-weight oversight, the outdated, manufacturing focused Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provided in DoD Handbook: Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) for defense Material Items (MIL-STD-881C), and the inability of traditional waterfall-based process to accommodate iterative development.

[Read more…]

There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon. Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do.
Brad Stone – Journalist & Author

Consulting firms, academics, and consultants are developing models for the Future of Work.   Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) developed a scenario called the Future of Work: A Journey to 2022.  The premise of the study is: “disruptive innovations are creating new industries and business models, and destroying old ones.”[i]  PwC outlined three distinct worlds of work: Blue, Green, and Orange.

[Read more…]

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

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report found that only 21% of employees are engaged at work and 44% of employees experienced a lot of stress on the previous day – both findings are up 1% from 2021.

In one of the largest studies of burnout, Gallup found the biggest source was “unfair treatment at work.” That was followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure.

Disengagement and stress in workplaces are good indicators of an organisation’s workplace climate. They can also provide insights into potential issues with the organisation’s culture.

[Read more…]

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

If your business is going to survive, you must be able to read and react to changes in your markets and continuously improve your competitive position.  It’s more important now than it’s ever been.

SWOT is a model often employed to characterize a company’s competitive position in terms of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  If a competitor creates a new offering that you can’t match, that’s a weakness.  If you have one that they can’t match, it’s a strength. 

[Read more…]

Guest Post by Annette Davison Ph.D (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

According to the definition in ISO 31000, risk is the impact of uncertainty on [achieving] your objectives. Of course, this impact can be both negative or positive. ISO 31000 states the following:

“Clause 6.4.2 Risk identification: The organisation should identify risks, whether or not their sources are under its control.

Clause 6.4.3 Risk analysis: The effectiveness of existing controls.”

[Read more…]

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

There are two basic types of contracts applied to development projects. They are Firm Fixed Price (FFP) and Cost-Plus (CP). Each type has a number of different variations shown in Table 1. FFP contracts are for projects with mature technology, less uncertainty, and more predictability. CP contracts are for projects with new technology, a lot of uncertainty, and less predicability. There are other types of contracts but are out of scope for this paper.

[Read more…]

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

People!  People in positions of authority wish for popularity, they may demand respect in one way or another but, above all, being trusted is perhaps the most desirable.  Trust, they say, needs to be won, respect is awaited expectantly but not necessarily given enjoyably, and popularity is fleeting.  In the absence of trust and respect, and despite any feelings of friendship or congeniality, toxic environments can prevail even though their obnoxiousness is well known as is the souring effect on human relationships.

Everything, at some point, involves people and relationships of some sort will develop in one way or another.  Psychologically speaking, relationships are based on individuals and their personal needs or desires for socialising and maintaining both a physical and emotional balance.  The same is also true of groups of people.

[Read more…]

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

If your organisation is suffering from performance issues despite what you consider well-executed strategies, plans, and initiatives, then you have a range of roadblocks holding you back.

Typically, when organisations are losing market share or not making achieving their revenue targets, the first thing they do is to change their goals, strategy, mission, structure, vision, values etc, and even their plans.

Looking externally seems to be the easiest when organisations are suffering a range of performance challenges that they want to improve.

[Read more…]

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

New product development engineers are managing risks, daily, with each design decision: unknown risk in creating something new, risk introduced through a failure, human factors risk, and other risks related to products and services. Their design decisions affect downstream activities (from production through disposal) and the bottom-line success of the product in the market. How can engineers manage these risks through the design process?

Proactively managing risks can be an iterative part of product design engineering. Risks can be managed at the early concept phases of development when changes to the design are easier to make. Finding and addressing risks also helps the team to avoid surprises late in development and after the product has been released to the market. The results are not only managing risks but also managing the design process for a more successful product.

[Read more…]

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

Projects are about businesses and business is about money.  Very few firms are not-for-profit and profit margins are fundamental to ensuring a company’s survival in the dog-eat-dog world of the markets they operate in.  Profit declaration is an essential part any company’s annual report and a quick, but not necessarily accurate indicator of its financial health.

According to the microeconomic ‘Theory of the Firm’ companies exist to maximize net profits and all decisions must bear this in mind. But profit margins are based upon forecasts and assumptions until a final account is determined.  It’s only then that the grim reality of undeniable and irreversible losses is seen or the comfort any balance hasn’t slipped into the red, or the euphoria that predetermined margins have been maintained or even exceeded!

[Read more…]

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

Two schedule tools are widely used for the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS )around the world to manage projects. The first one is Microsoft Project (MS Project). The second one is Primavera P6.  They are both very good. Primavera P6 is an Oracle product originally designed for the construction industry. MS Project is simpler and easier to learn based on my experience. It also costs less than Primavera P6. DOD uses MS Project and typically requires it for use on government contracts. Other industries use one or the other depending on the size and complexity of the project.

[Read more…]

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

Compliance management is getting more challenging. Not only are legislators and governments around the world imposing more regulations, but the expectations placed on compliance leadership to management expanding scope of compliance oversight is growing every day. The periphery of compliance–including ethics, diversity, ESG, and risk management–ask to sever more of compliance leaders who are seeking to best manage, scale, and address compliance demand efficiently and effectively.

[Read more…]

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

Risk professionals can learn from Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine.

The ripple effect of the war on every individual can be felt across the globe. One such effect is the increase in fuel and food prices. This war is a stark reminder that we are living in an interconnected world. And the inter-connectedness of our risks within and external to our organisation must be considered as we identify and manage our risks. The complexity of our risk management practices should not be under-estimated.

Here are some risk management lessons we can learn. [Read more…]

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

When the electricity grid fails, there is a risk of cascading impacts from what might seem to be a relatively minor event.

Having just watched a Electric Power video on this very topic, I feel obligated to inform the masses, what would happen if the power grid shut down?

If the power grid goes down, water and natural gas will also likely fail at some point, so planning is critical. Without a plan in place, most of us would be in bad shape with an extended grid outage.

[Read more…]