1. Introduction
The BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe cast a shadow on the oil industry and its senior executives. Has the industry learned its lessons or will it be forced to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Oil company executives and board members should have seen the Deepwater Horizon event is as a wake-up call for the industry. Continue reading
I am not easily impressed by technology. In fact, I am often a contrarian and don’t easily buy into the hype of the “next great thing”. It’s probably a combination of factors.
One being that I started my professional career during the 1980’s and 90’s – a period of time when there was a veritable explosion in new technology. A period of time when technology titans such as Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Oracle (to name just a few) were born. A time when mainframes were giving way to distributed computing and the internet was coming of age. Continue reading
What comes to mind when you hear the term “disrupt”? Does it suggest chaos, lack of direction or other unsettling events? Or do you see it from the other side of the coin—when you’re the one causing the disruption and, as a result, leveraging the opportunity that results?
If your organization has an anticipatory mentality, disruption is often synonymous with opportunity—that is, if you’re able to accurately anticipate the future and plan to act on it accordingly instead of merely reacting. Continue reading
“Communication failure” is an often cited reason for project failure or cancellation. All too often it is only recognised after the fact even though ‘poor communication’ will almost inevitably have been included on the risk register.
Communication is the transfer (and receipt) of the right data, information and knowledge to the right party(s), at the right time, in the right place, and in the right medium. Information provides the power to make the decisions that are needed to make a project successful and resolve and overcome difficulties. Continue reading
Why are we still using risk management tools (e.g. ISO 31010) to focus only on the threats to an organization? I was pleasantly surprised when reading the description of the “Structured “What-if” Technique” where I found the following strength and limitations information: “SWIFT can be used to identify opportunities for improvement of processes and systems and generally can be used to identify actions that lead to and enhance their probabilities of success.” Continue reading