To understand risk is to understand people. Everyone comes from different backgrounds,
- What we enjoy
and
- How we enjoy life.
It is what makes each of us unique and valuable because – with this uniqueness – we bring our own valuable perspective.
I am blessed enough to be able to wake up each morning to walk along the beach – it gives me the time to strategically think about my day and process those things happening
- around me,
- in my life,
- at work,
and
- helps me prioritize the things I need to get done.
Ultimately, it serves as my devotion time to help me figure things out thereby mitigating the risks to my life’s happiness!!
Recently, during these walks, I have started to think about how I have historically assessed risk and how differing perspectives could impact an organization’s ability to achieve their strategic goals. The best way to depict this (in my mind anyway😊), is the following analogy:
During my morning walk this past July, what I saw was a pack of seagulls flying and if you ever have seen them fly in a pack – they will fly in formation (imagine: blue angels / thunderbirds if you ever have seen an airshow) –
As I observed – what I noticed was the leader was the one looking down at the ocean for the fish whereas all the others were looking straight ahead. My thoughts when thinking about this activity:
At first, was well this leader better be good or all of them are going to starve, (Risk 1 – governance/personnel)
then I thought, well they are being somewhat inefficient because if they were all looking down for food, then they would have a better chance of finding fish and wouldn’t starve (Risk 2 – inefficiencies)
but then I thought if all of them were looking down, then it could possibly put them in danger from other things in the sky (aka: plane) and kill them (Risk 3 – Security)!
In this simple analogy you can see why assessing risks from different perspectives is important as while it’s important to eat, if you die because you were in search of food – then security might be more important in the moment to achieve your strategic goal!
Therefore, when we go to plan and scope a project it is important to critically think about risks by asking the age-old questions of
- Who
- What
- Where
- When
- Why
- How.
Since the way business transactions are conducted is evolving day by day and in non-traditional methods, my perspective is the top activities impacting organizations include:
Over the coming weeks, I plan to dive into each of these activities from both the customer and employee perspective and how this may differ from how the risk has historically been viewed from the company perspective. I hope you join me on this journey!
For a customized discussion on risk related to your organization’s strategic objectives, schedule an appointment today here:
https://outlook.office.com/owa/calendar/BusinessConsultation@erosriskconsulting.com/bookings/