One Simple Method to Validate Risk Assessment Results

Everyone sees the world a bit differently…it’s one of those fun facts that makes life so interesting. Think about how boring the world would be if we all thought the same way! As with a group of any size, a company’s personnel will have a variety of perspectives or biases on a particular risk. It’s…
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scarcity mindset

How Scarcity Mindset Can Cripple Your Company’s Future

I don’t think it’s an understatement or cliché to say that the uncertainty gripping today’s business environment and overall economy is thick enough to cut with a knife. With inflation still stubbornly high and the odds of a recession increasing dramatically in recent months, companies are once again considering how to best navigate choppy waters.…
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Should We Still Be Using the Term Risk Management?

“What’s in a name” you ask? Aside from “To be or not to be? That is the question,” this is probably one of Shakespeare’s most well-known quotes or idioms. And coincidentally, it forms the basis of one of the biggest debate’s in the risk management world today. Between risk appetite, heat maps, and the reliability…
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Asking Unbiased Risk Assessment Questions

Originally coined by the U.S. Army War College in the early ‘90s, the acronym VUCA, short for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, has become a popular term for describing today’s business environment. I agree this oft-repeated mantra could almost be considered cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true. To make the best decisions…
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Determining the Best Approach for Low Probability Risks

To start today’s article, I would like to share a family story from July 2021… My husband Nathan was taking our son Jackson to his first baseball game. The two of them took a “guys” trip to see a minor-league team in my former hometown about 3 hours away. On their way, they stopped at…
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5 Steps to Shifting Board Oversight from Operations and Risk to Strategy

Contrary to popular belief, a Board of Directors, Trustees, or whatever title fits the corporate culture are not only for publicly traded companies. Simply referred to as the Board by most, it can be defined broadly as “…a group of individuals either elected or appointed to provide organizational leadership and oversight.” Following the Enron scandal…
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How to Move Past “Analysis Paralysis” – 5 Steps for Leaders

For this Independence Day week’s post, I would like to share the following article written for the most recent quarterly issue of Carrier Management, a journal exploring issues affecting executives of property & casualty insurance companies. (However, like previous guest articles in Carrier Management and elsewhere, this article can easily be applied to company leaders…
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ERM Strategic Planning: Ensuring Long-Term Company Needs are Met

With summer officially underway and the 4th of July holiday closing in, hopefully you’re getting some well-deserved time to step away. Besides some vacation time, this lull before strategic planning resumes sometime in the early fall is also a great time to pause and reflect on the contributions of your company’s ERM program – past,…
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