Smart Risk Management

9

Step Five½—Commit to Taking Action

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

• rate your risk management programme against a continuous improvement environment.

• create an action plan that addresses areas of risk within your firm.

• obtain written commitment from employees on what they will actually do to minimise or address unnecessary risk.

The (Never Completed) Last Step

To you, this last step may seem like an afterthought, yet it is very crucial to the success of your risk planning efforts. Even if we learn something from our lessons learned programme (in step 5), unless your employees actually implement the identified changes and improvements, you waste the time spent in understanding the causes of risks and how to avoid them. Almost every organisation that has an effective risk management programme, especially those that have implemented enterprise risk management protocols, believes that risk management becomes a natural part of its continuous improvement culture.

Familiarize yourself with the term continuous improvement, which means that we are constantly working to improve what we are doing. This strive-for-quality attitude includes streamlining processes, rethinking work, re-evaluating every goal, and eliminating unnecessary work and waste; all designed to make things better and lower the cost of doing business. This cultural norm must be included in an effective risk management programme. If it is absent, your people will continue to take the same needless risks ...