Enterprise Risk Management

CHAPTER 10How to Plan and Run a Risk Management Workshop

ROB QUAIL, BASc

Outsourcing Program Manager, Hydro One Networks Inc.

INTRODUCTION

The guidelines and advice in this chapter are based on the author’s experience facilitating more than 200 risk workshops of various forms, with the number of participants ranging from 8 to 800. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to facilitation techniques, but assumes the reader has some basic understanding of how to facilitate a management meeting.

WHAT IS A RISK WORKSHOP?

A risk workshop is a structured, large-group conversation about future uncertainties.

• The workshop is structured to yield specific results within a specific agenda: decisions, learning, and commitment to action. Therefore, there is a set agenda and a facilitator, whose responsibility is to ensure that the conversation takes a specific form aligned with the workshop’s objectives.
• The workshop involves a large group. Large, in this sense, means more than seven or eight participants—more people than could normally have a satisfactory, efficient conversation about a complex topic on their own in a single pass, without leadership or guidance, and achieve an effective outcome or result.
• The workshop is a conversation. The emphasis in a risk workshop is on enabling an open and frank discussion among people with knowledge or authority over the subject risks, and on encouraging contrary views and perspectives.
• The workshop is about the future. It concerns future events ...