Please do not be afraid, I am not going to divulge any military secrets.
Stealth – or stealthy – in layperson terms means very low detectability, or quasi undetectability.
It is a characteristic very desirable to aggressors, for example the military: History tells us of german submarines made stealth via rubber coating, of airplanes and ships made of non-metal materials and shaped to deviate the impacting detecting radio waves. Also camouflage is a kind of stealth; all in all, what prevents detection can be categorized as stealthy.
Risk management – or processing – cannot but operate on detectability, therefore, who those of us are involved, have to be aware of the stealth characteristics of Risk.
Risk cannot always be easily and immediately identified: it is more like one of the mythical monsters with one hundred head and one sees a head a time. Risk is such as not to reveal its nature to us, it is us who have to search, know and understand it.
A nasty, stealthy creature Risk is, isn’t it?
Please do not misunderstand me: when I visited the Belgrade (Serbia, former Yugoslavia) air museum, the podium was owned by the wreck of a USAF stealth aircraft, invisible to radar but visible to the anti-aircraft gunners who shot it down.
When processing Risk, we have therefore to know in advance how it hides itself and how effective our detection methodologies and equipment are.
Though my own belief is that Prediction is much more effective than Prevention, I am no salmon to swim counter-stream, therefore I have to follow suit: whatever we name it – risk assessment, management, control, prevention, processing – detectability is a key issue, and we must focus it.
I am still quite concerned that the majority of risk professionals still speak – therefore think – in terms of performance: this is certainly connected to a legislation bias, th
at puts fines on accidents, but any accident is an after-event fact, I am thinking of prediction, therefore a before-event analysis.
I would put fines on non-effective before-event analysis: you buy a 100 USD worth cleaning appliance and – when you open the box and start assembling it – you find that the rubber pipe to feed it with tap water is an “optional” item.
Isn’t this stealthy information to the User?