Friday, July 8, 2016

Are People Numbers?

By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc.
Are people numbers?  You might be insulted by the question.  If I think of you as just a number, then the implication is that I don’t care about you, or that I am treating you as just a generic blob.  Companies go to great lengths in their advertising to ensure us (their customers) that we are not being treated as a number.  I think we can all agree that people are so much more than just mere numbers and as such they cannot be reduced to a number.
Changing gears a bit, how much of your risk management is based on numbers?  Put another way, how well would your risk management system function without numbers?  I suspect hat risk management at your firm would cease to exist in its current form if it had to operate without numbers.
Let’s shift gears a little bit more.  The vast majority of risks are caused by people being people.  Anyone else see an issue here?  Risk is caused by people but managed by numbers which are not a good representation of people.  Hmmmm.

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