7

Step Four—Minimise the Risk Exposure

Small issues swell into huge problems when ignored.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

  • apply three specific tools to help strategise and minimise the negative impact of a major risk.

  • develop some specific ways that people in your organisation can be proactive in minimising the negative effects of risk.

  • understand why risk taking requires employees to think for themselves.

  • begin to delve into the real cause of a major risk.

Because avoidance of risk is not possible, it is better to be proactive in minimising any negative or costly consequences of innovation, creativity, and colouring outside the lines.

This chapter, step 4, gives you the tools to do that. If every employee within your organisation knew how to use these tools to mitigate the risk of success, you would have a healthy company with a viable future.

Risk Mitigation Tools

At the beginning of this book, you were asked to think of a particular risk that your organisation is undertaking. You now can define the optimal strategy to use based on where your exposure falls in the matrix shown as figure 7-1. This tool helps you to quantify risk based on two variables—likelihood and negative impact.

Exercise: Risk Strategy Grid

Instructions

Recall the risk your organisation is undertaking. Define your strategy based on where your exposure falls into the grid in figure 7-1.

This risk strategy grid is a common matrix that is often used to assist ...

Get Smart Risk Management now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.