Risk Governance of the Few or the Many

Risk is glorious in its technicolor explosions of fact, fiction, supposition and opinion. For those of us who manage those explosions, we often wonder if our primary role in governance is the herding of cats. Cats, you say? Well, cats are highly intellectual and independent entities. My cat Sherlock can stand in the middle of an empty room and bring everyone in the house to its center as he loudly expresses his displeasure at well…life in general. The fact that he has the capacity to control the existence of our household is a testament to the strength of his voice and his ability to manipulate our reality. Good or bad, when Sherlock speaks, the loudness of his convictions stops our time.

Sherlock’s analogy is real within all our workplaces. There is and will always be that one individual who brings chaos to the best of our risk and safety objectives and goals. They are that one individual in life who believes that their one voice, shouted at its loudest, can manipulate the masses and determine the outcome of our best-laid plans and our reality. It begs the question we all ask ourselves in difficult interpersonal situations – do we govern risk for the many or the few?

I have had many situations in which an individual has entered my personal risk workspace, flailed their arms, jumped up and down and demanded their way or the highway. For those of you who have attended many of my classes, I continually promote the practice of the steady glare in the mirror on a regular basis. Each of us as risk professionals embraces the old saying…been there…done that. The yelling, threatening, self-promoting, and childish machinations of an outlier usually bring out my best practiced blank stare to which I embrace my own oblivion. I liken the negative machinations to a child’s temper tantrum or Sherlock’s attempt for attention.

Risk governance can only thrive on consensus and managing the risk of the center of the communities we serve. As we seize opportunities for improvement, we understand the value of our diversity, but also understand the importance of collectively needing to govern the needs of the vast majority of the communities we serve.

I will argue with my dying breath that COVID brought risk to its knees with all its emergency measures and demands. It skewed our approach to what governance means and what it in fact does. It gave opportunity for unilateral emergency orders and mandates that, quite frankly, often brought forth the very worst in governance and its role models. Let’s be retrospective, in your face risk management doesn’t work when it’s based on threat, fear and retaliation.

Best practice risk and safety governance is founded in its ability to embrace all the difficulties and diversified situations we face on a regular, ongoing basis with respect, the ability to empathetically listen, and our ability to achieve consensus through our non-biased communication of expectations, partnerships and opportunity. Govern for the few or the many? Let’s argue that we, as risk professionals, govern individually and collectively for the totality of our communities in a holistic approach by embracing all who participate. Grant patience to ourselves for our Sherlocks, but let us remember our strategic risk mission is to achieve consensus with all of our community partners – the many, not the few.