A wonderland where there would be no risk, where the mere concept of risk would be unknown, where events would be just events, and accidents just accidents.

I once read that Bhakti (or Bhakhti) believers totally submit themselves to their god, which may sound quite crazy to us, but it is their belief: which also means that, once more, truth is in the eyes of the beholder.

TODAY’S RELIGION: RISK
We are nowadays writing too much, we are talking too much about risk.  Risk is going to become industry’s divinity just as quality was until year 2008, and it was then replaced by the Crisis or Risk divinity.

Divinities come and go.  History tells us this and now it is risk.   What will be next?

It is not a question of being cynical: when I read on my papers that it is an all-risks insurance, I wonder what the insurance industry means by all-risks.

Insurance companies were the first to study risk, and are still ahead of manufacturing industry.  Wanting to read something about history of risk, among the many titles I found, I bought myself Peter L. Bernstein’s Against the Gods – The Remarkable Story of Risk (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998).

And, just to underline the above, Peter L. Bernstein is President of Peter l. Bernstein, Inc. who  economic consultants to institutional advisors and corporations.  It is practically impossible to find industrial writings on risk.

I worked for almost twenty years for a company involved in inspections and shipment of products.  The company’s knowledge and understanding of the risks involved in transferring merchandise and documents was much more thorough than that of its customers, who just put their merchandise and their money into its hands.

Story of sea and ocean transportation and exchanges of goods should teach us a lot.  Industry men: seamen and ocean goers, ship owners and commanders have a much longer and deeper knowledge of the subtleties involved in their traffics, therefore of the risks that can affect them.

We industry people are newcomers to risk management and the recent seesaw years of quality and crisis do not help us.

LESSONS LEARNED
If the saying go fishing where the fish are holds true, then we should learn from insurers, first, rather than drafting standards that may reveal themselves some kind of astronomical black holes.

Or, at least, allow for interpretations of the standards that can take us back to earth.