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

Time matters most when decisions are irreversible

Transparent vulnerabilities are so obvious that they are easily overlooked; they are the ones we:

• see when they are pointed out;
• recognize when we are made aware of them;
• fail to acknowledge, leading to potentially significant consequences when the vulnerability is realized.

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 Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Introduction

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.

[Read more…]

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

Fail Fast – Fail Small – Learn and Move On

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)

What Does Eloquent Design Mean to You?

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)

PDCA is Not Best Practice

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)

Is Your Organization’s Planning Brittle?

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…]