
The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.
— Malcolm Gladwell
WE CAN HELP YOU REDUCE THE RISK IN YOUR RISK MANAGEMENT
Managing risk is an integral part of organizational performance, and this practicum is designed to sharpen and strengthen your risk management processes, activities, and culture.
The Risk Management Practicum is more of a customized process than a standard workshop. Risk profiles in various industries and organizations – healthcare, banking, aviation, construction, civil service, manufacturing, etc. – differ significantly, so we work with you to create a learning experience that addresses your specific needs.
Our goal is to help you reduce the risk in your risk management.
A MAJOR RISK IN RISK MANAGEMENT
The weak link in many risk management efforts is low conversational capacity. When people and teams lack the ability to stay in the sweet spot under pressure, the nondefensive dialogue needed identify and manage risk doesn’t happen because
- People shut down when they should speak up.
- People dominate and argue when they should listen and learn.
- People behave in a way that makes it difficult for others to contribute.
The bottom line is this: No matter how well crafted your processes, if conversational capacity is too low they won’t function as intended.
THE KEY TO ROBUST AND RELIABLE RISK MANAGEMENT
The purpose of risk management is to improve the future, not to explain the past.
— Andrew Jaquith
High conversational capacity helps you execute your risk management or safety strategy in a consistently rigorous and effective way. In this workshop, we’re not teaching you risk management practices, we’re helping you build your conversational capacity as you strengthen and improve your current risk management practices. This includes things such as
- Risk identification
- Risk analysis
- Risk evaluation
- Risk mitigation
- Incident investigations
- Meetings and decision-making
- Risk culture
A VIRTUOUS CYCLE OF COMPETENCE
We’ll help you identify your most important activities and then show you how to build your conversational capacity to ensure they function effectively. The goal is to create a virtuous cycle – an upward spiral of conversational competence and risk management – by using your risk practices to build your conversational capacity, and your stronger conversational capacity then strengthens your risk management.
We help you apply this skill building at various levels of your organization:
- Individual
- Team
- Project
- Organization
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
- Are managers wielding their authority in a way that lifts or lowers the risk management of their teams and organizations?
- Are people willing and able to speak up to authority when a risk or safety issue is in question?
- Do your meetings and decision-making protocols help you manage risk in a more clear, open, and rigorous way?
- Does the conversational culture of your team or organization directly support the effective management of risk?
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
In this practicum participants will learn how to
- Identify factors that reduce conversational capacity and impair risk management such as the poor use of authority, counterproductive behaviors, cultural barriers, and shabby meeting and decision-making practices.
- Adopt a range of strategies for ensuring your team is working in the sweet spot when it’s engaging it’s most vital risk management activities.
- Strengthen their ability to align conversational behavior with risk management goals.
- Make risk management a mainstream organizational practice by building it into foundational activities such as meetings, decision-making, problem solving, and change management.
- Create a more vibrant risk management culture.
- Increase the quality and consistency of “Safety Voice” in a rigorous, skill-based way.
- Move beyond merely talking about psychological safety by building your capacity to create it.
- Increase organizational resilience and agility as a risk management strategy so you can quickly adjust your practices to fit shifting circumstances.
- Achieve more than just superficial compliance by increasing internal commitment to important processes and activities.