Mindfulness and Risk

Known globally as The Risk Doctor, David has been working in risk management for about 30 years. He has worked in 48 countries on every continent except the Antarctic (too cold!), with clients in most industries.

  Risk Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Much of what we do in our personal and professional lives is automatic and unthinking. In the lives of projects, this complacency can blind us to critical risks. Learning to practice mindfulness can help us see risk more clearly and manage it more effectively.

Mindfulness has its roots in Eastern religion, although it is also used therapeutically to treat a variety of psychological conditions (including anxiety, depression and stress), as well as in coaching to encourage excellence in healthy people. Used properly, mindfulness can also make our risk management more effective.

Being mindful means bringing your complete attention to your current experience on a moment-to-moment basis, being aware of everything in your surroundings,acknowledging what is there and accepting it as valid. So how can this help us to manage risk better?

Mindfulness can be particularly useful in improving our identification of risks, by making us more aware of the full range of potential risk sources. These sources include:

   > Ourselves. We are often blind to the risks that we bring with us to our businesses and projects. Being self-aware will help us to identify those actions and attitudes that create uncertainty, as well as exposing risky biases and behaviors. Similarly mindfulness can help us find internally-generated risks that arise from within our own teams and …

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