Clouds of Vagueness
Andy Garlick
Resilience (Part 1)
For some time it’s been a theme in meetings between risk management people and business continuity people that the world’s ills can be solved by being resilient. Specifically, you don’t need to worry about that boring old risk profile when resilience means you can deal with anything that’s thrown at you, up to and including […]
We need to talk
I’m getting sidetracked trying to write an article on resilience. One of the hares I’ve chased is Robert Kaplan’s and Anette Mikes’ discussion of three types of risk. This is because it is asserted by the World Economic Forum’s risk report to recommend resilience as the correct approach to long-term global risks. Turns out it […]
I know what you’re thinking …
I’ve been thinking about the short exchange I had with Matthew Leitch when he disagreed with my description of his article on risk registers. It seems we live in different worlds. His appears to be one in which risk lists and all the associated barbarisms of matrices and traffic lights have been discredited and, presumably, […]
Proud to be a war quant
I’ve just re-read Douglas W Hubbard’s The Failure of Risk Management. It’s an odd book in that while I agree with most of what’s in it, I’m not particularly convinced by the overall story suggested by the subtitle: Why It’s Broken and How to Fix It. Hubbard’s theme is that we do not do enough, […]
Words in his mouth
In the course of reviewing Doug Hubbard’s book on failing risk management, I thought it was worth a little wanderette on how much Thomas Bayes has been abused, or bigged up depending on how you see it. I thought it would go as follows. “Bayes’ contribution to posterity was to get his name against a formula for joint probabilities which […]
It’s a risky world, just ask anyone
Last week the Institute of Risk Management North West regional group held a meeting on Adapting to the Global Risk Landscape. The intention was to talk about some of the most serious long term risks and what we should be doing about them. There’s a write up of the meeting appearing shortly on the IRM website, but […]
Fragility management
I reviewed Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Antifragility with the promise to look separately at what the lessons might be for organisational risk management. The answer is quite a bit, and this article will just be an initial high level view. The thinking is developed pretty uncritically from the book. There will be plenty of scope […]
Don’t worry, the end is nigh
The next article on this site is to be about applying M Bricolage’s antifragility ideas to organisational risk management. Not surprisingly I thought it was time to take a break for a little light amusement. I’ve just discovered that the University of Cambridge is thinking about setting up a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. To my slight disappointment […]
Antifragility
Antifragility is the topic of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s last book in his trilogy on our uncertain world and how to deal with it. The other two were Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. These are both relatively narrow in their scope – though well worth their own reviews at some point – whilst Antifragility gives […]
Always look on the bright side of life
Matthew Leitch has asked some questions on my Risk workshops post which I think are aimed at my use of terminology and, specifically, the treatment of good things which could happen. This seemed to be worth its own Wandering. The term I’d prefer to use about the clouds of vagueness wreathing the ways things will work out […]
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