… this week

Another hectic week of paid activity has nudged the weekly review a couple of days late.

I found a new Risk-related blog this week, courtesy of Trevor Levine, the Riskczar. The new blog is called Risk Containment, I would refer you to a couple of good posts to get started;

• “Tempting fate and other silly concepts“ – talks about the need to consider multiple scenarios, and the risk of adopting very silly mitigation strategies in the first place.
• “Capturing lessons learned“ – provides some good advice to apply in a post-incident (or exercise) debrief.
  • Learning form experience and near-misses is an essential attribute to improve your resilience – so this is an essential skill to develop.

Another blog that always has great articles on the risk and governance fields is written by Norman Marks.

• “A discussion of Risk Appetite by thought leaders” includes an interesting reference that describes
  • risk appetite as the level of risk you pursue to make profit, and
  • risk tolerance as how much you can tolerate before financial or other distress

I had always thought of these as interchangeable labels, but this variation provides an interesting approach to use in promoting the convergence of risk management and BCM concepts.

There is a wealth of valuable material to learn from on Norman’s blog. Take a look at this post (“Building the case for ERM”). Norman is promoting that RM (or ERM if you prefer) needs to become more focussed on operational performance, in the same way that I have been arguing that BCM has to transform itself.

He is also highlighting that this cannot be done with quarterly or annual reviews of the risks and mitigations – mindfulness and situational awareness are critical to RM/BCM and resilience. You need to practice these disciplines every day.

… and take time to read and improve how you are doing it.