After an incident occurs in an organisation ask yourself ‘Was this avoidable?’ 9 times out of 10 the answer will be yes.

When an incident occurs in your organisation ask what happened, why did it occur, could you have done anything to prevent it from happening and lastly, is there anything you can do to stop it happening in the future? This is your post event analysis.

But why restrict it to just your organisation? You not only have the opportunity to learn from your own mistakes, but you can learn from the mistakes others have made. After a mistake is made in another organisation ask yourself “how susceptible are we to exactly the same thing happening?” and you can potentially prevent of the same thing happening in your organisation.

If you see a likeminded industry, company or organisation making a mistake in the news or something happens to one of your competitors ask yourself the question, “could that happen to us as well?”

If the answer is ‘yes’, you need to do a risk assessment and analyse how susceptible your organisation is and how strong and effective your controls are to stopping that. Use others’ misfortune to strengthen your approach to risk management, and reduce the likelihood of those events happening in your organisation.

Bio:

If you have any burning questions on risk management, Rod Farrar is always ready for a friendly chat.  Contact him at rod@paladinrisk.com.au or 0400 666 142.