Guest Post by James Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Paul Gladieux has over 45 years of experience working in the quality profession. In 1991, he founded Global Quality Management Advisors (GQM Advisors). The group provides quality-related services focused on management system design, development, compliance, and certification in a wide range of sectors.  His clients in the energy sector include companies such as: NuScale Power LLC, BWX Technologies, Westinghouse Nuclear AP1000 Program, Terra Power LLC, Worley Energy | Chemicals, U.S. Department of Energy, Westinghouse Nuclear, Vigor Industrials LLC, and Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.

Guest Post by Howard M. Wiener (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Iterative software development approaches have been around since the 1950s but many mark the beginning of what is commonly thought of as Agile as the creation of the Agile Manifesto, a document written by a number of software engineers in 2001, which contains 12 principles that serve as guidelines to how software projects should be conducted.  Since then, professional services and product organizations have taken Agile and bent and twisted it into proprietary commercial forms for their own gain. 

Guest Post by John Ayers (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

A black swan event has a very low probability of happening but if it does the consequences are devastating. The black swan event for Texas was the weather and the consequence was catastrophic to their power grid.  Prior to the February 2021 snowstorm with freezing temperatures, you must go back to December 1929 to find the last historical Texas snowstorm. The storm lasted for 24 hours dropping 12 inches of snow with freezing temperatures. But they did not have natural gas, windmills and solar panels to worry about like today. 

Guest Post by Daniel Burrus (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Even as I write this article, jobs in industries ranging from entertainment and media to manufacturing and medicine are being transformed by artificial intelligence (AI) and its many iterations. Many people don’t even know they are already in a competition with AI and that several facets of their job are already being accomplished by a digital application or intelligent machine. Workers will not be able to outpace these machines simply by working longer hours or moving faster on the assembly line.

Guest Post by Andrew Sheves (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Becoming a risk manager can seem to be more art than science. There’s not a clear pathway from degree to junior risk manager to senior risk manager to CRO (Chief Risk Officer) in the same way that you can chart the progress from freshly minted CPA (Certified Public Accountant) to head of Ernst & Young. (Financial risk management is the exception here as there is usually a clear path there.)

So why is the risk manager career path fuzzy compared to other professions?

Guest Post by Andrew Sheves (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Googling ‘what is a risk manager?’ will get you variations on ‘it’s the person who manages that organization’s risks,’ which is a pretty weak answer. It’s certainly not enough to help anyone who’s just starting in the role to understand what they’re supposed to do. Similarly, if someone’s thinking about this as a career, we need a bit more.

So here’s a more detailed answer.

Guest Post by Joseph Paris (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

It’s January 2020.  I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications.  I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their employee’s work-life balance; no more one-hour commutes each way.

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

“Man measures time by happiness or sorrow, tranquility or torture.  The one is past and gone so quickly that is seldom seized and savored while the other turns the hours into days and the weeks into years”.  This was written by Major Pat Reid in “The Colditz Story” and, while it comes from a time of internment at a dark time in history the same is true today.

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Many valuable lessons can be learned from the failures of risk governance in Australian banks.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac), two of the largest banks in Australia had to provide Court Enforceable Undertakings in May 2018 and December 2021 respectively to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The World Economic Forum has conducted a Global Risk Survey since 2006. This is the fifteenth survey. The responses are from 650 members of the World Economic Forum. In the preface to the 2021 Global Risk Report it is noted that: “In 2006, the Global Risks Report sounded the alarm on pandemics and other health-related risks.” (1) With this context in mind, the 2021 risk analysis “centers on the risks and consequences of widening inequalities and societal fragmentation. In some cases, disparities in health outcomes, technology, or workforce opportunities are the direct result of the dynamics the pandemic created.” (2)

This piece will review the results of the 2021 Global Risk Survey. It will also discuss some of the issues surrounding the survey.