As key input and output of typical risk management processes, or risk processing – that is: risk identification, risk evaluation, risk prevention and risk monitoring – project killing is a very apt stage of project management. When a project goes over budget, be it for cost or time, or growing customer un-interest or designers’s un-skills, here comes the dressed-to-kill man or woman, and the project is killed, shot down. It saves money, and more resources. 

CRISIS BRINGER
Crisis-bringing requires more subtlety: a crisis-bringer who finds out the crucial stage(s) or the turning point(s) of events’ sequence, the unstable period(icity), e.g. the one(s) of extreme trouble or danger.

In short, a crisis-bringer is the person who catalyzes the production of one or more critical mass(es) that accelerates the onset of significant turning point(s); or proper adjustment of the process parameters – whatever the process is – to control instability and make the process be under control.

Crisis-bringers are usually found among writers, musicians, actors, painters – artists of any sort. But they are also found among esteemed professionals; only, their work style and policies are far from being even similar to those of “yes men”; “yes women” seem harder to be found, these days, so it may be easier to meet a female than a male crisis-bringer.

I borrowed the term from Deep Purple’s song Storm-bringer, the meaning of which is similar to crisis bringer.

Crisis-bringing can have innumerable applications, from Politics to Church, from Economy to Industry to Education to Society: where- and when-ever a Leader, or a manager, as the case may be, feels that breaking eggs must come before frying them, then crisis-bringers come into action.

We all give to the word “crisis” a negative, almost obsessive meaning; the same as for “critical”, but this word has also positive meanings. Let’s just think of criticality when evaluating for selection on a good restaurant menu: price, diet, appearance, taste, serving time – what else?

Of course, if I sent my bio or CV as a crisis-bringer, I could only expect to be laughed at.

But that’s another sign of the times: crisis-bringers usually get an advanced, very advanced feeling, even information, of what is very likely to go wrong. So they accelerate almost to paroxysm the onset of those conditions that will develop into almost uncontrollable risk – to build effective risk awareness.

Believe me, it’s not a question of any “third eye” perception, or intuition; it’s more like “data collection & analysis”, that we all were taught of at school.

When we don’t follow “good practices”, whatever they may be, we’ll soon run into troubles; and the less we listen to ourselves but eye on and give voice to bad counsellors, instead, then we soon also forget that risk – or danger or hazard – warning mechanisms are deep inside any living being’s nature.