Googling ‘what is a risk manager?’ will get you variations on ‘it’s the person who manages that organization’s risks,’ which is a pretty weak answer. It’s certainly not enough to help anyone who’s just starting in the role to understand what they’re supposed to do. Similarly, if someone’s thinking about this as a career, we need a bit more.
So here’s a more detailed answer. Continue reading
Thirty years ago, cancer and heart disease were the diseases of aging that Americans dreaded the most. People called cancer “The Big C.” In the United States in 1990, the death rate from cancer was 216 per 100,000 population. From that date on, there has been a steady and monotonic decline down to 157.5 per 100,000 population in 2017. There are multiple reasons for this. Many people who took up cigarette smoking in their youth, were dying of lung cancer in 1990. Continue reading
It’s January 2020. I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications. I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their employee’s work-life balance; no more one-hour commutes each way. Continue reading
“Man measures time by happiness or sorrow, tranquility or torture. The one is past and gone so quickly that is seldom seized and savored while the other turns the hours into days and the weeks into years”. This was written by Major Pat Reid in “The Colditz Story” and, while it comes from a time of internment at a dark time in history the same is true today.
But what has this got to do with the value of communication? Communication today is faster, cheaper and more available that at any other time in the history of mankind. Despite ever-increasing speed and bandwidth and accessibility today’s communication often leads to frustration and time can stand still while we wait for decisions and agreement while enduring argument and misalignment. Continue reading
Many valuable lessons can be learned from the failures of risk governance in Australian banks.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac), two of the largest banks in Australia had to provide Court Enforceable Undertakings in May 2018 and December 2021 respectively to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). Continue reading