Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Just a 4-Letter Word?
Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.
The role that risk management plays on projects deserves some serious re-assessment.
Risk management is verbally acknowledged by many, if not most, in the project management community as being a critical aspect of the project management role. What is astonishing--given that initial premise--is the limited focus that risk receives in actual practice.
In conducting organizational assessments, training courses and other consultations with organizations, I frequently see minimal levels of focus paid to actually managing risks on projects. Managing risk appears to be the project equivalent of eating spinach: You know it’s good for you, but you just can’t seem to bring yourself to do it.
This is not to say that consideration of risk management doesn’t occur at all, or that it doesn’t receive any attention from project managers. Given the relative profile of risk management as a practice and the relative contribution that effective risk management can make, however, the approach taken by many is surprisingly lacking in rigour.
What passes for risk management today? Based upon interviews with over 100 project managers in the last six months (drawn from a number of industries), it typically includes:
Reviewing checklists of common risks to assess whether any of them are relevant to the project. Typically, these are checklists developed over time by a …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know." - Groucho Marx |