I had my book launch for Risky Business: How Successful Organisations Embrace Uncertainty on Thursday afternoon. What a fantastic afternoon with near on two hundred risk professionals, current and past clients and friends and family helping me to celebrate. This is an important book for the risk profession and organisations alike. As I said during
I have long complained that the risk profession has made risk management needlessly complex. Part of it is the creation of our own language. Risk-speak. We put “risk” in front of or after perfectly normal words like conduct, appetite and reputation. By putting risk in front of or behind these words we feel we create
No doubt you have heard of groupthink, how the desire to conform – so a group remains of like-mind – can lead to poor decisions. There is another phenomenon at play that I call organisation think, through which the culture of an organisation influences HOW a decision is implemented. The effect of organisational culture on
Organisations need to embrace uncertainty because of the Uncertainty Paradox, which states that the only certainty is uncertainty. No one can predict the future. This is the first concept I explore in my new book Risky Business: How Successful Organisations Embrace Uncertainty. The most successful organisations learn to systematically confront and get comfortable with uncertainty.
It’s time we did something about the persistent perception of risk as a compliance function. Something that is done to keep the board, the audit and risk committee or a regulator happy. Another task in addition to running a successful organisation. STOP. Before you decide that risk is valued in your organisation – ask yourself