What are the key factors to consider in creating a risk-aware culture?

In order to create a risk-aware culture, it's essential to ensure that your organization's risk appetite aligns with its strategic goals and objectives. This alignment helps in making informed decisions. This balances risk and reward, ultimately contributing to the achievement of long-term goals. t.

Risk taking a critical factor of a culture's paradigm. It begins with creating a psychologically safe milieu where people learn to trust and foremost show vulnerability-based trust. Leaders and team members depend on each other for career security and social stability. The stakes are big, and so is the risk associated with failure. It is actually this risk that fosters trust between colleagues, team members and their leaders/managers. This risk-taking ability is fostered on purpose with clear and authentic intentions. This supercharges the ability of sharing risks within teams, across groups, thus leading to more investment of trust. Trust is never built as a single act or experience. It develops over time through many acts and experiences.

We embed risk flags in our business processes. Our Risk unit facilitated a review of the entire business processes and pinpointed areas where things could go wrong. In these areas, we set risk flags to function like an alarm and alert us that something is 'off'. We also determined the factors that trigger the risk flag and agreed the next actions that need to be taken in such scenarios. And of course, all involved need to be properly educated so that the effort is not in vain..

Identifying the risks flags is important but not sufficient. Very organisation must develop its own risk matrix, the will aid risk assessment and evaluation. The process will enable the organaistion rank the various risks flags and focus on those that pose imminent danger if not addresed.

Empowering employees by involving them in risk management processes and decision-making enhances their sense of ownership and responsibility. If as an employee I believe my voice matters, I'll go the extra mile to mitigate risk. Engaging them through training, clear roles, and a supportive environment encourages active participation in identifying and mitigating risks. Remember your people are the most valuable assets, all other assets derive their important from "people"

More than anything, what people want is to know the risks that matter. They're not looking to be risk experts, just know enough to stay safe. That means budgeting your engagement to talk about the highest risk and most impactful issues that are relevant NOW. It also means using real life examples. Show them the article of the average office worker and how they were taken advantage of leading to massive loss of $$$$$. Never in a blaming way; more "don't fall for the scam" sort of way. Even better, explain to them how the things you teach will help them be safer all the time - not just at work, but when at home, traveling, or anywhere else. Sell them on the "mindset of security" and how it benefits them!

Crafting a risk-aware culture while engaging and empowering your team is akin to orchestrating a successful food delivery service. Ensure a secure and trustworthy ordering platform (psychological safety), assign ownership of specific dishes (risk management roles), offer ongoing culinary training (continuous learning), celebrate innovative menu additions (responsible risk-taking), maintain a responsive feedback system (customer reviews), define clear roles as kitchen stations (role clarity), reward outstanding chefs (employee recognition), and lead as a master chef guiding the kitchen (leadership by example), Encourage risk-aware conversations on a daily basis.

Integrating risk management into everyday processes ensures that risk considerations are part of routine activities. Risk management should not be a one-off event but should be integrated in your everyday processes. This involves incorporating risk assessments, monitoring, and controls into various business operations, making risk management a natural part of the workflow.

I disagree with this. One of the key problems in awareness training that I've seen is over-educating. Forcing the audience through risk-management concepts and processes that really only apply to the program managers and risk managers. For the average person, all they really want to know is the general risk and consequence followed closely by simple and easy-to-understand countermeasures to avoid them. To really create an effective risk-aware culture, we need to focus as much as possible on not exceeding the tolerance most people have for the subject.

Promoting risk awareness involves training and educating employees about potential risks and their implications. Leverage on training and development. Effective communication channels should be established to encourage the reporting of risks and incidents, fostering a culture of open dialogue and transparency.

Creating and improving a risk-aware culture is like maintaining a well-functioning airplane. Regularly inspect your plane (organization) for signs of wear and tear (inefficiencies) to ensure it flies smoothly. Encourage clear communication (coordinated flight) among the crew (employees) to navigate turbulence (risks) effectively. Remove barriers (obstacles) obstructing the flight path (risk awareness) and fertilize with feedback (performance indicators) to keep the plane soaring safely. Engage the expertise of your team (passengers) in evaluating the flight experience (risk culture), and plant the seeds of continuous learning (training) to upgrade your airplane's performance. Embrace risk as opportunity instead of fearing it.

Regular assessments and evaluations of the organization's risk culture are essential. These evaluations help gather data to make informed decisions. Identify strengths and weaknesses in risk management practices and culture. Ensure continuous improvement efforts. These actions will help you build and sustaining a risk-aware culture within your organization, this, fostering a proactive approach to risk management.

Body awareness Risks are in essence threats - be it for a business, an organisation or a person. We perceive threats through our senses and process it with our brain. However our rational brain is slow and can be overtaken or clouded by our hyperfast emotional brain, as Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman in his book ‘Thinking fast or slow’ demonstrates. Body awareness means that we can identify the wide range of feelings in our body as indicators of possible threats. It means reading between the lines, identifying subtle indications of something being ‘off’. By developing our senses and understanding our feelings, each person in an organization will be equipped with an automatic and wide range of risk alerts.