Why We Need to Rebrand Risk

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Organizational Culture   Risk Management  

PMI recently released a report on strategic or enterprise risk. This quote stood out to me:

“A strong risk culture enables organizations to address risks most effectively and manage their impact, seeing both the positive and negative sides of risk and making effective decisions that align with the organization’s risk strategy.”

I don’t know any organizations that don’t want to “address their risks most effectively,” but I also haven’t met many people who understand whether their employer has a risk culture—and if so, what it looks like or implies.

In fact, I haven’t met many people who are aware of their organization’s risk strategy, or if it even has one. So how do we change that? How do we start creating and maintaining an organization where risk awareness and management is an inherent part of what the organization is—a part of the culture?

Risk needs rebranding
When we think about something that is part of a corporate culture, we think about something that is at the very heart of what the organization is. It’s not something that the enterprise does, it’s a part of who they are.

We would expect leaders to regularly talk about cultural elements, we would expect the talk to be backed up by initiatives and investments that align with that culture. Employees and customers would be …

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