A Deming-Goldratt Take on Risk Management
If we could predict the outcome of everything we do with mathematical certainty, then our lives would be much simpler. In reality, we exist within a complex web of interdependencies and such certainty is not possible. Hence, we live with uncertainty and its inevitable companion: risk. Continue reading
Harvard Business Review this month published an article on ‘How to Live with Risks.’ The essence of the piece is that we are looking for risk in all the wrong places:
“Risk management has historically focused more than half its time on legal, compliance, and financial reporting functions. That’s starting to change as companies realize that most big hits to shareholder value come from strategic and operating risks.”[i]
What is Risk? Many people think about risk as the potential impact of an exogenous event, like a hurricane or an auto accident. However, it is much broader than that. Risk is uncertainty with respect to attainment of a desired result.
Management, according to Wikipedia, is “. . . the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives by using available resources efficiently and effectively.” Continue reading
We all know that we live in an amazingly uncertain world full of doubts and reservations. Questions and misgivings about all manner of things, big and small, race through our heads constantly. Continue reading
One of the many purported advantages for adopting a Design & Build (D&B) procurement model is that it allows the Contractor the opportunity to carry out design and construction concurrently thereby ‘gaining’ time when compared against a Design-Bid-Build procurement model. Continue reading