Simplifying Risk Management with Innovation

Amid pandemic and post pandemic impact, global economic unrest, and blind spots for organizations; one area that strikes back is risk management. With the fast paced ever changing business needs, it’s time we reflect and ask ourselves “Are we holding on to workable risk management strategies or it needs innovation?”

With this blog, I’ve tried to discuss the need of re-inventing and re-defining the ways to manage project and organizational that are sustainable. As per the latest report published by World Economic Forum in 2022, “Only 11 percent of respondents believe the global recovery will accelerate and for the next five years, respondents again signal societal and environmental risks as the most concerning. "The intent here is not to scare of sound negative but prepare with relevant amendments to the processes that will sustain the uncertainties to deliver successful projects. No matter how much we talk about backing up technological advances and having human resources hired; over the ten years horizon “climate action failure”,“ extreme weather” and “biodiversity loss” are three critical areas of risk to be mitigated. Few other critical technological risks that can be counted are “cyber security failure” and “digital inequality”.

(World Economic Forum,2022)

We are in start of 2022 and the COVID-19 crisis is still unrest, so the global economic recovery continues to slow down. Keeping the context in mind, these external risks pose great threat to an organization as well as projects internal to it. It’s important that the risk register that we maintain must contain the most relevant risks mentioned here and should further be brainstormed to drill down internal impact of listing project risks. Though we cannot do much as an organization or a project manager to mitigate external risk, but we can consider risks such as livelihood crisis and infectious diseases spread. Delivering a project within permissible metrices is a successful project, however delivering without chaos and taking care of your people in post-pandemic era can be counted true project success.

Therefore, to reinforce sustainable risk management with reduced surprise elements, project leaders must assess, flag and do front end risk planning. Most importantly, as an organization to ensure contracts capture clauses based on these risks and deviate to more flexible contracts to mitigate pricing volatility caused due to pandemic impact or economic recession. Overall, an effective risk register must be simple, executable and factored in with changing external factors.

Author: Nitasha Nijhawan

References

The global risks report 2022 -World Economic Forum. (n.d.).Retrieved July 19, 2022, from https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2022.pdf