Risk Management

Having a complete and thorough risk management system in place is essential for not only protecting your projects but also the organization itself. Strong risk management should create value, be an integral part of your organizational processes, and be based on the best available information. Although we hope crises never occur, the reality is that your transformation projects cannot afford to ignore the potential threats that could spell disaster to your business success.

How We Can Help

Your ideal project and business risk management system is one that not only minimizes potential threats, but uncovers and maximizes new opportunities. Our senior consultants can help create value within your organization by helping you identify risks and threats and provide step-by-step plans of action to help minimize them. They will also help prioritize your risks and help you set realistic measures to deal with them based on their magnitude. All of this is done with one thing in mind: to help your projects be as successful and “worry-free” as possible.

Specifically:

Development of an management controls framework including for example:

  • Assessment of the risk management / controls governance culture
  • Translation of control principles into practical standardized management control objectives.
  • Development of management control activities based on risk management and control objectives
  • Approaches to monitoring and refinement of management control objectives and activities evolve over time

Identification of areas where potential risk needs to be managed, including for example:

  • Reputational, image and credibility management risks
  • Financial damage and loss risks
  • Human resources management risks
  • Measurement and results reporting risks
  • Operational effectiveness risks
  • Technical reliability risks
  • Planning & design risks
  • Stakeholders management risks
  • Channel & market risks
  • Procurement and contract management risks
  • Research and data reliability risks
  • Information systems risks
  • Legal challenges
  • Non-compliance with regulations etc.
  • Directors and managers liability
  • Use of a strategic approach to focus on priority areas first
  • Use of a structured processed to minimize time, cost and organizational stress

Key Considerations

Questions to Ask

  • Do we have a strong risk management plan that is integrated with our strategy and communicated effectively across all stakeholders?
  • Are our risk management measures consistent across silos in terms of quality and expectations?
  • Do we have key risk indicators to continuously monitor the project’s and our business’s risk profile?
  • Do we have a clear understanding in what our project and business risks are and do we have these prioritized to the more prevalent (must not happen risks)?

Thoughts to Consider

  • Risk management done poorly can be as devastating as no risk management at all – it is absolutely essential to have a strong risk management plan that continually adapts and is revised to ensure that your project and business is protected and does not have a sense of false security
  • Risk management must be embedded and directly connected between all the planning and implementation elements, beginning with the business strategy development all the way to execution of program portfolios and individual projects.
  • In one poll of senior business executives, the vast majority rated their organizations and projects a 4 out of 10 or below when asked how well their performance measures were aligned with risk management in their organization.
  • Holistic performance management systems such as balanced scorecards give organizations a new opportunity to align strategy and performance measures with risk management.

There are many benefits to having a strong risk management plan in place including: minimized threats to projects, decreased project failure, identification of unrealised benefits, decreased waste, management of Directors and managers liability, and general peace of mind.

  • Identification and avoidance of potential risks to your organization’s health
  • Early detection of risks or even unlawful activities with a plan that includes actionable steps if a risk should occur
  • Decreased possibility of damage to your organization including: reputational, financial, legal, and operational performance
  • Enhanced operations with greater, more certain achievement of strategic and operational performance objectives in the most cost effective fashion, enhancing the value proposition to both clients and other stakeholders
  • Lower compliance and audit effort and costs
  • A risk management system that does not over or under control the project and/or business operations
  • A solid template for conducting risk plan reviews

Notable Clients