by Dr. Rick Nason
Partner
RSD Solutions Inc.
Risk analysts have a secret that many managers are totally unaware of. Let me explain it by telling a little story that is only disguised to protect the innocent (and the guilty).
I was once brought in to a company to act as a risk consultant. A few days into the assignment I was scheduled to attend a high level executive meeting. The meeting started as these things tend to do. The third item on the agenda was a routine risk report. The risk analyst started the report as usual but used a risk term that I was unfamiliar with. I politely raised my hand and asked if the analyst would be so kind as to define the term for me. That was met with looks of shock and dismay around the table. How could a risk consultant not know this term! The manager who hired me for the engagement looked visibly shaken and embarrassed. After an embarrassing silence in the room that acknowledged my ignorance and faux pas, the risk analyst started to explain the measure – and indeed it was a commonly used measure that I was fully aware of – just not with the label that this specific company used for the term.
The meeting continued without further incident and ironically no one asked any more questions. Needless to say I thought that the assignment was blown and all credibility I might have had was now as good as cremated. I slinked back to my hotel, wondering how to rebuild credibility. However much to my surprise there were several messages waiting for me. Each was from a senior manager at that meeting – and each of them was thanking me profusely for asking the question. It appears as if no one else knew what the internal term meant either. A typical response was, “I am so glad that you asked that question today. I have been going to these monthly meetings for 6 years and never had a clue what they were talking about until you asked that question today! Thanks again – keep up the good work!”
This got me thinking - now with my much bigger brain seeing as I now knew that this institution had basically renamed many of the common risk management tools. The question I asked myself is this, “How many risk managers consciously or unconsciously invent language or techniques to confuse their audience?”
Risk management is not hard to conceptually understand (it is hard to implement), but yet it is frequently compared to rocket science and brain surgery. How much of this is caused by risk managers implementing their secret weapon of terminology confusion?
1 comment:
Great point.
Risk managers often fall prey to a temptation that traps many specialists - trying to make themselves irreplaceable by appearing to be sole masters of some arcane art.
This exposes them to same risk as the Emperor in "The Emperor's New Clothes", namely that eventually someone may figure them out. Alternately, someone may decide that they're not really providing a service. Neither option is pleasant.
Risk managers add value by... adding value. They need to be able to translate what they do into English, and the more understandable, the better. Like clients everywhere, people that pay risk managers like value for money.
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