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Association of Contingency Planners UTAH Chapter |
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President's Message January 2010 Managing Risk in the next Decade In the introduction to his book, Against the Gods – The Remarkable Story of Risk , Peter L. Bernstein makes a remarkable claim regarding the management of risk:
I was initially skeptical, but intrigued. So I waded through 300 pages of Bernstein's historical and theoretical arguments, and found myself largely converted. While the management of risk may not be the single largest contributor to the modern age, I agree that assessing and managing risk is absolutely vital to the health of our individual organizations and our economy as a whole. As Business Contingency Planners, the assessment and mitigation of risk constitutes the core of our professional assignment. What can happen? What is the likelihood? What is the impact? What preventative measures can we take? How can we mitigate any negative impact? We can lose a lot of sleep and drive ourselves, and our management, crazy analyzing the possible permutations. Establishing balance and perspective is challenging. If we react to the daily news and develop exhaustively detailed plans for earthquakes, fires, floods, shooters, strikes and every other possible event we face the risk of alienating management who have no appetite to fund plans for the “unlikely”. Yet if we only plan for “certain” or highly likely business interruptions, we will find ourselves disastrously unprepared when a lower probability event comes knocking. Many who are visiting this web site, or our chapter meetings, are trying to find a starting point in developing contingency plans. My advice to you is to “generalize” your planning process. Rather than planning in detail for each eventuality, group risks with similar outcomes. Start your plans by documenting the answers to broad questions such as:
These questions may seem overly simplistic. Yet if you will answer them, and document them, you've got a reasonable start to your plan. I guarantee that other appropriate questions will follow with relative ease. Don't allow your desire to be comprehensive delay you from making a good start. But then keep going until you and your management are comfortable. The core of the mission of the Utah Chapter of the Association of Contingency Planners is to “provide a forum for the exchange of experiences and information through peer networking to benefit volunteer organizations, government agencies and businesses of all sizes”. Please take advantage of us. Regardless of where you are at in the process your input is valuable and your opportunity to benefit from the experience of others is significant. The next decade isn't going to get any easier, so plan accordingly!
Jay H. Hanson 2010 ACP Utah Chapter President |
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