RISK MANAGEMENT = PREPARING FOR WAR
The Marvel and DC superhero franchises with their busloads of supercharged superheroes seem to be missing one important character – a risk management superhero..
But last week, while watching the third instalment of the John Wick movie franchise, I found both the man - John Wick – and the maxim:
Si vis pacem, para bellum – If you want peace, prepare for war.
Risk management is a bit like that - it requires a strong commitment to prepare organisational lines of defence, for people to understand how the lines work and to learn to use them in a daily context for risk protection.
No it’s not a war per se, but organisations large and small make decisions every day about projects and their staff that have potentially serious consequences – personal injury or death, loss of employment, business impact or closure etc. And these decisions are rarely able to be entirely controlled, so bad stuff will happen..
John Wick is continually tested in a variety of risk-infused situations, yet his risk management attributes of tools, training and determination keep him alive. As the key risk/villain in the first John Wick film put it:
John Wick is a man of focus, commitment and sheer will..
Similarly, being your organisation's risk champion requires:
a clear focus on what risk management is, and is not. Otherwise it remains feel good box ticking for senior executives and meaningless unusable drivel for those required to implement risk policies
commitment to make risk management real, to discuss risk regularly, and to incorporate risk into decision making. This also requires the commitment of resources – time, money and risk tools, and
sheer will to persist, review and improve the practice of risk management.
So, like John, prepare well..