Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
A Guy Named Murphy
Elizabeth is a freelance writer and project manager living and working in London. She runs The Otobos Group, a project communications consultancy specializing in project management.
Doing nothing is an acceptable response to potential project threats that are deemed relatively insignificant or highly unlikely to occur. But what do you do when risk mitigation activities have been curtailed and that improbable problem does indeed arrive? Communication and calm are critical, according to these project management experts.
London Mayor Boris Johnson was widely criticized recently for the city’s failure to keep public services operational during the worst snowfall the United Kingdom’s capital had seen for 20 years. Why were there no buses? Simple — the mitigation activity required to prepare for the atypical amount of snow was deemed too significant.
Widely accepted risk management theory says that doing nothing is an appropriate response to some risks. But what happens on a project when you’ve done no risk mitigation and then the risk materializes?
“When you are running a large project and have already passed the project planning phase, the project manager's core role is managing the performance of people, meeting plan expectations, and assessing the threats to project success,” say Tim Pare and John Kirkwood, managing consultants at PA Consulting Group. “From a practical point of view, there are always a ton of these threats and there is seldom time available to spend on things …
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I think somebody should come up with a way to breed a very large shrimp. That way, you could ride him, then, after you camped at night, you could eat him. How about it, science? - Jack Handey |