Best Possible Outcome

CHAPTER 1LEAD WITH A RISK MINDSET

Building a risk culture provides a metric and a common language for communicating how an organisation operates within its environment.

To demonstrate how inculcating a risk culture is a fundamental leadership competence, we pull apart the prelude to the insurgent bomb attack in 2004 in Baghdad. Through the ‘risk management’ lens we address failures in communicating and managing the risks faced, then shine a light on how a risk culture is essential to aligning all leaders across your team.

We show how risk management is a key innovation driver and an essential mindset in determining clear-eyed decisions and reform.

By the end of the chapter you will have no doubt that adopting risk disciplines will ensure that your organisation communicates with a common language across all functional areas, and that threats are understood and controlled to balance likelihood and consequence, while enabling efficiencies and innovation.

Every evening, the leadership team would meet in the headquarters conference room, the physical heart of our organisation.

The major in charge of the 110-person combat team sat at the head of the table, with all other commanders, mainly junior officers like me, perched on folding chairs around the table.

Maps covered the walls, many decorated with pins marking significant locations, and with black marker scribbles of report lines and control measures that broke up the city into easily identifiable sections.

Cheap grey carpet ...