Advisory & Tips

This article shares the results of new research that pinpoints common gaps in ERM programs and provides tips on how to increase ERM’s contributions to the value creation cycle.

This article explains why companies fall into The Risk Paralysis Trap™ and the three capabilities you need to avoid it.

This article contains tips and strategies to bridge a common gap in ERM performance —  failure to understand interdependencies.

This article contains tips and strategies to bridge a common gap in ERM performance —  failure to cultivate foresight.

This article shares tips on how to bridge a common gap in ERM performance — weak understanding and monitoring of trends.

This article provides tips on how to promote two more of the 12 essential traits for a healthy risk management culture, i.e., being Resilient and Adaptable.

Will your organization survive over the long-term? We all like to think the answer is “yes”.

This article provides tips on how to promote two more of the 12 essential traits for a healthy risk management culture, i.e., being Prepared & Ready and Innovative.

This article provides a perspective on the value of risk management from Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield who returned in May from the International Space Station as both a veteran commander and social media star.

This article provides tips on how to promote two of the 12 traits, i.e., being Performance-Oriented and Collaborative.

Last fall I had the pleasure of co-presenting a session on Risk Appetite with Rob Quail of Hydro One Inc. He shared a novel approach that he documented in his article Defining Your Taste for Risk.

In this article, I describe how to promote a culture that is Inquiring and Vigilant.

Are your people skilled in having conversations that support a culture of inquiry (one of the healthy risk culture traits in this month’s Feature Article)?

[This article was recently published as a guest editorial in RiskPost, the newsletter of the New Zealand Society for Risk Management.]

Over the fall, I was invited to give three talks in which gave me an opportunity to share emerging practices and experience in articulating and applying risk appetite and risk tolerance.

This is the second article in my series that defines twelve specific cultural traits that are necessary for effective Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and provides tips on how to cultivate them in your people.

I recently revisited the book Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono. The powerful central idea is that rather than approaching decision-making as an argument to be won (or lost), instead the Six Hats method defines the full range of thinking approaches that are required for generating creative strategies to achieve business goals and solve whatever problems arise along the way.

In this series of articles I provide strategies to cultivate the twelve traits in your people.

I’m currently reading the book Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators by Patrick Lencioni, published by Jossey-Bass in 2005. I immediately recognized Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team because they are also the most common barriers to developing a healthy risk culture.

This 4-part series of aricles introduces the Risk Wise ERM Implementation and Organizational Learning Cycle and its four essential steps for bringing ERM to life in any organization

I’m often contacted by risk management leaders who would like a simple handbook of risk management. They find the sheer volume of literature on Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) overwhelming.

In this article, I’ll share tips on how to integrate ERM into business practices. This is the third article in a 4- part series on risk management basics.

Over the summer Melanie Herman, Executive Director of the Nonprofit Risk Management Center, invited me to co-author a white paper* with her on the topic of risk appetite. I jumped on the opportunity to distill my practical experience into a simple process that any organization can use to articulate its risk appetite and effectively integrate it in their decision-making.

In this article, I’ll share tips on how to assess the implications of risks on enterprise performance and stakeholder value.

The Influence Diagram is a tool to understand and evaluate the cause-effect relationships between risks and objectives.

Welcome to this series on the basics of risk management implementation. This series is not about the process for risk assessment or risk management – that you’ll find well covered in the many standards and frameworks such as ISO 31000 and COSO. Instead, I’ll provide advice on “How to implement risk management so that it becomes an integral part of your organization’s business practices and culture.”

Employees and managers need to understand the organization’s risk criteria (i.e., risk appetite and tolerance) to ensure that their decisions lead to the most efficient and effective use of corporate resources and balance potential upside and downside effects.

Is your organization risk intelligent? Recently I was asked to present a session on how to assess risk management maturity to The Conference Board of Canada’s Strategic Risk Management Council.

Recently a member of the Enterprise Risk Management Association on the LinkedIn business networking site asked “What is the preferred enterprise risk guidelines covering all sectors?” People who ask that question naively search for the perfect decision rule.

If you want a straightforward risk management guide, check out the latest book from Melanie Lockwood Herman: Ready… Or Not: A Risk Management Guide for Nonprofit Executives.

Recently a member of the Enterprise Risk Management Association on the LinkedIn business networking site asked “What is the preferred enterprise risk guidelines covering all sectors?” People who ask that question naively search for the perfect decision rule.

If you want a straightforward risk management guide, check out the latest book from Melanie Lockwood Herman: Ready… Or Not: A Risk Management Guide for Nonprofit Executives.

In this article, I share my observations about the rarely discussed barriers to ERM success. These insights are drawn from two sources. The 20 years I have spent helping organizations to implement systematic risk management give me direct from the trenches experience in what works and what doesn’t.

If you want to learn about enterprise risk management from some of the leading academics and practitioners of this methodology, Enterprise Risk Management: Today’s Leading Research and Best Practices for Tomorrow’s Executives is the book for you.

This month I had the honour of speaking about Enterprise Risk Management at the Ontario Hospital Association’s HealthAchieve conference.

In November, I was delighted to receive an email from Kevin Knight of Australia announcing that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has officially released both guidelines on risk management and an update on its earlier risk management terminology.

Have you found yourself having to defend risk management lately? People at the water cooler, in the executive suite and in the boardroom are asking ‘Why should we invest our time and money into implementing risk management in our company when it’s failed so spectacularly elsewhere?’

Think fast; can you name 3 publications on risk management? More importantly, what risk management literature have you read within the past year? If your answers are blanks, you are in danger of wasting your time and resources trying to reinvent the risk management wheel.

The risk of starring in your own DIY nightmare can be high if you ignore these Do’s and Don’ts for the risk management do-it-yourselfer.

As a risk management practitioner, l want to stay up-to-date on the latest advances in the field. Yet I sometimes find myself, like many risk professionals, unaware of great sources of risk information because they are outside of my existing network or professional discipline.

Last November I had the honour of facilitating the Risk and Insurance Management Society’s Enterprise Risk Management Summit. At the event, one of this E-Zine’s subscribers, Carol Fox, Senior Director of Risk Management at Convergys Corporation shared a profound, succinct statement on the value of risk management.

Many risk management leaders and programs focus on value protection (i.e., minimizing losses) while paying scant lip service to value creation (i.e., capitlizing on opportunities). This is particularly dangerous in tumultuous times.

If you have risk management systems but your people still haven’t embraced it, you are not alone. In a May 2008 issue of RatingsDirect, Standard & Poor’s commented that enterprise risk management (ERM) remains “underfunded and underintegrated.

In the research for his book Good to Great, Jim Collins set out to answer the question ‘Can a good company become a great company, and if so, how?’

Have you ever assessed a risk only to have the results dismissed by a senior executive with the question “But what is the real risk?” It’s frustrating to hit a total disconnect between reason and politics.

In this issue, we’ll provide three tips to overcome common sources of political resistance from the most senior decision-makers in the organization.

In Part 1 of this series on overcoming resistance, we covered ‘the plan’ for change that deals with the resistance of about 20% of your people. In this issue we’ll focus on ‘the people’ and how to deal with emotional resistance.

Is risk management alive and well in your organization? As a risk management leader, your main goal is to get people in your organization to take something that they do intuitively, but perhaps not consistently, and make it much more systematic and deliberate.

Have you ever noticed that some people prefer to work on just about anything except tackling those tasks that are critical to achieving their objectives? Instead they focus on doing what they know how to do or what is easy or convenient to do.

Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter outlined a change management model in his 1996 book Leading Change. His 8-stage process has become a classic that can benefit any risk management leader wanting to enhance the practice and culture of risk (and change) management within their organization.

“Skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been.”
Walter Gretzky
That’s the advice hockey great Wayne Gretzky got from his dad. It encapsulates a central objective of risk management ― to anticipate your future circumstances (both threats and opportunities) so that you can position yourself advantageously.

In a New York Times article titled What Happens If We’re Wrong?, author Peter L. Bernstein reminds us that forecasts are wrong from time to time, particularly when the underlying assumptions are faulty.

Here are some tips that you can use to build the kind of relationships and networks that will create the momentum you need for risk management to catch-on in your organization.

Who are your “go-to” people? If you’re like most of us, you tend to reach out to individuals who work in close proximity to you. Or, you call on colleagues in your department or another function in which you already have close working relationships.

Have you got what it takes to successfully implement systematic risk management in your organization? In my 18 years in the risk management field I’ve met many executives who wanted to integrate systematic risk management into their organization’s business practices.

In this article, Judy Orr, a business coach in the Greater Toronto Area, answers the common questions managers and executives have about coaching as a mechanism for leadership development.

Executives don’t end up in the news or in jail merely because they took a risk. Rather, they end up there for improperly selecting and managing their business risks. We actually expect our leaders to take risks.

IBM Global Business Services in cooperation with The Wharton School and Economist Intelligence Unit have published the Global CFO Study 2008 titled ‘Balancing Risk and Performance with an Integrated Finance Organization’.

Over the years, I’ve identified three common but faulty strategies that risk managers use as they aim for total control to protect themselves and their organizations from making mistakes. I’ve also found some simple antidotes.

At Risk Wise, we are dedicated to bringing you the best risk management information available. The Resources page on our website give you access to sources of high quality information, including a READING LIST.

Risk Management is about adapting to change, elegantly. It’s about preparing for the future, not playing catch-up.

You owe it to yourself to take some time at the start of the year to find out what the trends are in your business environment and what they could mean for you and your organization’s future.

Following the marketing expert’s formula, I wrote down the three critical components of the dream marketing package for the risk management professional.