They Call Me the Risk Whisperer

Tucker View Consulting

They call me the Risk Whisperer.

You see, in a previous role, I spent most of my “Work Hours” performing Risk Assessments on big IT Projects. During a conference call, one of my colleagues jokingly called me “the Risk Whisperer” and the name seems to have stuck. 

I indeed do Risk management as part of my job… what you may not realize is that you do too… in fact … whether you know it or not you do risk management all day every day … you just don’t call it that… but in this case the words do matter!  

Risk Management is all about dealing with Uncertainty.

Uncertainty is all around us and we deal with it constantly.

Now Uncertainty can be both positive and negative. If they are positive we call them Opportunities and if they are negative we call them Threats.

When you got up this morning and got dressed,  did you know you were performing Risk Management? Most likely you were in a comfortable place (like your bedroom) it was a relatively comfortable temperature, not too humid, etc… but you were getting dressed for the day sooo… You had many things you needed to consider.

(1)     What was the weather forecasted to be (Sweltering Hot? Or a Blizzard?)?

(2)     What were your activities for the day? (Big Business Meeting? An Interview? Sledding with the kids?)

(3)     Who are you going to see? (Friends from HS? The Boss’s Boss? Maybe a Love interest?)

(4)     What if your plans change? (Did you bring clothes for the gym in case a meeting gets cancelled? Did you bring your special lipstick in case my love interest invites you to Happy Hour?)

(5)     Should you wear comfortable shoes to prevent your sciatica from acting up?

(6)     Should you bring an umbrella… just in case??? A sweater in case the movie theatre is cold? Etc etc etc

All these activities are Risk Management activities. You are anticipating what is to come and planning accordingly.

In the case of the Blizzard or the Umbrella, you’d probably be talking about handling Negative Risks of Threats.

In the case of the Gym or the interview… or the lipstick …. These would likely be positive things so they’d be considered Opportunities.

Let’s talk about our words because this is not just jargon!

You may have heard that the way to handle risks is called Risk Mitigation. However, Mitigation is just one of 7 ways to manage risks.

You can (1) Accept the Risk which means to Do Nothing and see what happens,

you can (2) Avoid a threat (change your plan so the threat cannot happen…. not going to a specific restaurant if you fear e-coli)

you can (3) Transfer the Threat … usually through insurance… or a maintenance contract.

you can (4) Exploit an Opportunity by making it happen instead of waiting to see if it will, 

you can (5) Enhance an Opportunity by increasing its likelihood or impact.

you can (6) Share the benefits of an Opportunity with a customer or a partner.

Or you can (7) use Mitigation.  Mitigation simply means that you are going to make the likelihood or the impact of a threat less.

You see with all risk management activities the intention is to manipulate the likelihood and/or its impact.

You wear comfortable shoes to reduce the likelihood of sciatica occurring (and you may have also reduced the pain if it happens this time, but you haven’t cured your sciatica by wearing comfortable shoes)

Conversely … You dress for an interview in a certain way because you want to influence the IMPACT of the activity it’s the same with how you decide to dress for the Happy Hour (just remember the likelihood of the interview or happy hour occurring hasn’t changed because of your clothing… the event will still happen irrelevant of what you are wearing)

You do Risk Management all day every day the difference is the words we use and the way we think about it.

This same logic could be used for many different (in fact most) of your daily activities:

(1)     Drive or take your bike?

(2)     Take the highway or side streets?

(3)     Order in or go out to lunch?

(4)     Call your Mother… or put that off until tomorrow?

All these activities are essentially Risk Management decisions!

So they may call me the Risk Whisperer but, in fact, we all are performing Risk Management! We just need to use the right words.