Clouds of Vagueness
Reviews
More for your money
I promised to review the Infrastructure Risk Group report on Managing Cost Risk & Uncertainty In Infrastructure Projects, a report which was launched last month at the ICE with the sponsorship of the IRM. The report is a result of work undertaken as part of the Infrastructure UK investigation of the high cost of infrastructure projects. […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Fools and liars
My ears are burning (metaphorically). I’ve just read Bent Flyvbjerg’s paper on quality control and due diligence in project management. His theme is the inaccuracy in forecast project costs and benefits. Specifically, the tendency to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits is attributed to the ‘planning fallacy’, a creation of our old friends Tversky, Kahneman and co. The source of […]
The profession that knows it all
The theme which underpins Clouds of Vagueness is the inherent difficulty of mastering an uncertain future and the inadequacy of our standard risk management techniques to help with this. So I was delighted to see the paper by Michael Power of the LSE in the journal Accounting, Organisations and Society, with the provocative title The risk management of […]
COSO on risk appetite – reaching for the ideal
COSO have also issued guidance on the ‘risk appetite’ to go along with that of the IRM and other authorities. I think it’s a good example of how risk appetite would be dealt with in an ideal world. By this I mean a world with two characteristics: you could decide how much risk you wanted to dial […]
The RARA model – how relevant to organisations?
A very useful model for thinking about risk taking has been created by David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster. In contrast to the IRM guidance it is rigorous and well thought through. The model consists of an influence diagram in which the nodes and influences have been well-defined. Thus the model makes an interesting and valuable contribution to the risk […]
The IRM on risk appetite – whatever does it mean?
The IRM has been inspired to issue guidance on risk appetite and risk tolerance. It’s very questionable though whether this helps us make much progress on organisational risk taking. Like many articles on risk matters it gets bogged down in a morass of vaguely relevant ideas so illiterately and unrigorously described that many sections are devoid […]
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