Abundance and Paucity

By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc.

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Sometimes when I sit down to write blogs I have an abundance of decent ideas to try out and see how they look on the written page.  Other times, like now, I have a paucity of ideas.  That I guess is one of the artifacts of being a living, thinking human.

The abundance / paucity cycle however also seems to apply to organizations.  Sometimes they have an abundance of ideas and the challenge of management is to try and prioritize which projects will be pursed and which ideas will have to survive a waiting time if they are ever to see the light of day.  Other times there is a paucity of ideas and the troops are generally marched off to an offsite to develop inspiration that sometimes produces results, but more often produces a wasted 72 hours for all involved.

So what’s the deal with your risk department?  If you have an abundance of ideas, how do you go about prioritizing them.  If you have a paucity, how do you generate new ideas?  Or do you simply think that all the good ideas for risk management have already been thought of?