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

One area that does not receive much emphasis in risk management is the human factor.  In risk assessments, risk events, likelihoods and consequences, vulnerabilities are the usual focus.  People are viewed as ‘weak links’ in risk prevention, but what about risk mitigation?  Your risk planning depends on people to respond when an event occurs. How good is their risk decision-making under stress?  There is the weak link.

In 1996, IEEE published a book on “Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Management for Engineers and Scientists” by Kumamoto and Henley[1].  This book is about using probability to assess reliability and safety risks in an industrial environment.  The book introduces some interesting concepts, such as risk perception and ‘Human Reliability’. [Read more…]

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

Why are there “bad” decisions? No one starts out to deliberately make a bad decision. If you look into available thought papers and reports, you can find some evidence that can provide some understanding of how bad decisions are made.

COSO in 2012, commissioned a report on “Enhancing Board Oversight”[1] focusing on challenges and biases in making professional judgments.

More recently, several HBS faculty authored a study an “attribution error”[2], where decisions are biased by unjustified attributions of goodness to applicants based on “luck” rather than ability. [Read more…]

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

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

Introduction

I was supposed to be in Boston presenting at “The Disaster Conferences” on 28 January 2015. Well, the weather just put us out to 19 March 2015 for the now rescheduled Boston conference.

I guess that they are still feeling the effects of this week’s blizzard, now named “Juno”; that left Boston with over 24 inches of snow.

According to the Weather Channel Winter Storm Juno pounded locations from Long Island to New England with heavy snow, high winds, and coastal flooding late Monday into Tuesday. The storm is now winding down.

The National Weather Service has dropped all winter storm and blizzard warnings for Juno. [Read more…]

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

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

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

How we design and implement systems and processes can play a large role in determining their usability.

Poor usability can contribute to avoidable risks.  This post addresses the need to employ risk identification and mitigation techniques in the course of designing things in order to minimize the probability of negative outcomes. [Read more…]

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

It has been suggested that Stone Age man had a higher IQ than today’s modern homo sapiens.

“That cannot be,” says the modern man, but if one thinks about such an assault on our modern-day ego and self-confessed superiority, the alleged ‘primitive’ man was able to survive in extreme conditions, traveled the planet and set the foundations for today’s societies. [Read more…]

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

We are living in a time of great disruption and uncertainty.

Every organization is facing great risks. Some of these risks are visible and many others are hidden.

So, it’s crucial that every company develops and implements tools to identify, mitigate and transform risks into dramatic improvements and even disruptive innovations. [Read more…]