With a threat, you search for the solution. With an opportunity, you search for the benefit. Reducing negative risk exposure is a good focus, but we need to understand that it is not value creating.
Are you tired of hearing all the excuses? Reducing risk exposure by attending to the threats is the predominant focus for today’s risk managers. There is no point in looking for opportunities if the boss wants us to treat the threats – the sooner the better.
There’s no time to search for opportunities. Looking for opportunities is difficult and therefore we do not try. There is no requirement to use ISO 31000, along with its definition of risk, within our quality management program. We use “risk-based thinking” instead to treat threats. We look at things in traditional ways and therefore have great difficulties in perceiving or appreciating anything new. In general, opportunity search may be essential, but it may not be sensible.
According to Edward De Bono, looking for risk opportunities involves effort, hassle, distraction, dilution of effort, and problem creation. Many people think the looking for opportunities is difficult and therefore, do not try. But we cannot afford NOT to look for opportunities.
To avoid this thinking, one could posit a solution that would deliberately allocate time to opportunity search as part of the determination of an organization’s internal and external context. The opportunities and threats found using a PESTLE or TECOP context analysis are addressed in planning actions to address the potential adverse effects (threats) and potential beneficial effects (opportunities). The drive for continual improvement would have us spend much of the planning effort on converting the opportunities in such a way to eliminate the need to address the threats while creating value for the organization.
A positive attitude towards opportunity searching needs to be encouraged. Motivation by the organization’s leader is needed to understand that the organization is searching for added value and that opportunity searching is the favored approach for making this happen. All workers can then become very good at spotting opportunities once they discover that this is what is expected of them.
De Bono suggests four elements to institutionalize opportunity search:
- Conduct an opportunity audit
- Assign an opportunity manager to lead the search
- Create an opportunity team as a permanent body, perhaps with rotating members
- Assign an opportunity task force whenever it seems that a specific opportunity, generated by the audit cannot be handled by the risk manager.
I used to facilitate the work of opportunity task force team members as they identified the opportunity, found potential value-creating solutions using an “opportunity-focused” fishbone diagram, selected an opportunity using a bubble sorting method, and creating an action plan to complete the effort. But there was a hitch! The team had to demonstrate that it created more value that what was expended in the total of the four De Bono steps. The accounting for each effort had to be approved, in advance, and audited by the financial leader at each organization.
We’ll dig a bit deeper into the methodology next week. After all, value creation is a wonderful thing in organizations that likes to focus on continual improvement, innovation, and learning.
Bio:
Robert B. Pojasek, Ph.D.
Harvard University & Pojasek & Associates LLC
Risk Management & Organizational Sustainability
rpojasek@sprynet.com
(781) 777-1858 Office
(617) 401-5708 Mobile & Text
www.linkedin.com/in/bobpojasek
Organizational Risk Management and Sustainability:
A Practical Step-by-Step Guide
Now available as an e-book
http://tiny.cc/xz3fhy
Also available as an online action learning course
Expert as environment, health & safety, and sustainability professional with a record of providing leadership, training and operational support to all levels of the organization; Implements new and revised management systems to drive EHS/sustainability program conformance throughout the operation; Integrates organizational systems of management using the ISO harmonized high-level structure; Provides support for organizations implementing sustainability/risk management practices featured in my book.