Wimbledon Lessons on Risk Management

Joao -

I believe that for a short while at least, risk management spending may increase across industries, but remember that this will also be at a time when companies are trying to recover financially, so they may not have sufficient reserves to do enough.

Where companies need to do a better job is:

1. Harvesting as many of these black elephant risks as possible during identification.
2. Before putting them on watchlists, identify the early warning signs where possible for these.
3. If those signs emerge, be willing to have an open conversation about how to respond to them.

For example, companies in North America could have monitored the news regarding the growing dangers of the pandemic in late December and early January and pre-emptively taken some steps to protect themselves in advance of government actions. Insurance is just one possible response. Others might have been proactively buying shares in companies likely to benefit from a pandemic such as Amazon or Shopify.

Kiron

Kudos to the Wimbledon team. They performed a due diligence, caprtured information on all relevant topics and convinced senior management to take the insurance. Time proved them right.

I wonder if a similar example can be found in companies that are based in the San Francisco area. The "Big one" is on the making, no ones knows for sure when it will hit, although there is a certainty that it will at some point.

Thanks for sharing the story, Joao.

I agree with Sergio

Hi Joao,
Thank you for sharing this interesting information. I look at your question and the information shared from the point of view that we as project managers' community can see a very good example of the importance and the benefits of risk management.
Finally!!!
I was leading Risk management organisation at regional level, and we really asked, trained, coached, etc PMs to apply risk management in their projects. I am convinced in the benefits of risk management, when it is really applied.
Unfortunately, majority of PMs, do not apply it in their projects. They can not even identify the risks properly, not to mention defining mitigation plan. It is considered a waste of time, as they are too busy to ''deliver'' the project..
Of course, we cannot talk even about any "buy-in's from stakeholders", as it was mentioned earlier in other comments, when the risks cannot be identified.
Very good example, thank you again for sharing it. I think there is a room for improvement in this area.
Regards.

The best thing to learn from this is when planning for emergencies, think of the most outlandish and improbable scenario and plan for that.

Dinosaurs riding meteors coming back to Earth to reclaim it? Sure why not. How would we manage that event? What risks and opportunities exist? What would be the results? Then apply a real world scenario and see how the responses and planning apply.

Kiron mentioned it exactly-a "black elephant". Most people don't believe in them, but they exist. Just like unicorns exist because if they didn't Scotland wouldn't have chosen them to be the national animal.