It's really all about you!

About 18 months ago, I kicked off a philanthropic project… It was called Risk Reward Awards.

It’s main focus was to focus on you! Yes, you, the professionals who eat, sleep, work, labour, sweat, cry and believe in telecommunications risk management.

In hindsight, maybe I looked at this with rose-tinted glasses.  I was passionate about my thoughts and opinions when it came to recognition. I wanted to change the legacy of award ceremonies in our industry. The abundance of marketing dollars spent on entertaining people in black ties and ball gowns, vendors and sponsors spending large chunks of their marketing budget for their logos to be splashed around the room, on display banners, bottles of mineral water, menus and on large 18foot high screens, purchasing several tables to host their guests, customers and ultimately their brand.

It seemed that awards were handed out quite freely – was it to those who had spent the most money at the event, advertised in the supporting publication, who knows...?

Having worked for a vendor in the risk management space, I am  well aware and have experienced many of these awards. I am not saying all are corrupt, of course they are not, but there is enough ‘noise’ that has occurred over the last few years to muddy the real visibility and clarity around awards.

I wanted to remove this underlying suspicion, quash needless rumour, eliminate the ‘old boys club’, get rid of possible bias and make awards purely down to the people within the industry to vote or be involved in the decision for their peers.

So, we launched the Life Achievement Awards in conjunction with the Risk & Assurance Group who kindly allowed us to present and promote this through their conference programme.

We marketed this award to the people who work and interact within telecoms risk management to suggest who should rightly deserve such an award and recognition. 

A simple model, putting the vote with the people… (okay, possibly similarities to Brexit… do not fear, I am not going to touch on this, as I fear I could be here a long time…)

So, what does ‘putting the vote’ with the people mean? It means that everyone who works in the telecoms risk management industry, the new-comer, the apprentice, the analyst, executive, manager, director, consultant, vendor employee, everyone who touches the risk management function has the opportunity to contribute and guide these new awards.

So what happened?

The first award was the European Hall of Fame and we had 7 nominations (all British) and 95 votes.

The second award, the African Hall of Fame had 10 nominations and over 600 votes.

The third award, well this was postponed because there wasn’t enough nominations.

Here is a finger in the air calculation…

There are 195 countries in the world, each of these countries have an average of 3 mobile service providers, 1 fixed operator and maybe 3 MVNO’s, (7 service providers)

So that is 1,365 corporations which employ maybe a minimum of 5 people in each for risk management. That equates to approx. 6,825 people.

I would predict there are possibly 10 vendors with more than 100 people employed in each and another 40 companies ranging from 5 – 100 people in size, so let’s average out to 40 companies with 30 people in each. That is 2,200 people.

We then have probably well over 1,000 consultants around the world in this specific area.

So, I would conservatively say there must be at least 10,000 individuals that are currently working in the risk management space in telecommunications…

Now this is not perfect math and I would say woefully underestimated, but that is 10,000 people that could vote… 10,000 people that could contribute

To make these awards work we need you!

We wanted  the Risk Reward Awards to assist individuals in their careers, departments, teams, to be recognised for their endeavours within the company and corporations, to be recognised within the industry.

1.     Please share this post with your colleagues, get them to share with their contacts,

2.     Follow the Risk Reward Awards page,

3.     Let us recognise efforts in Risk Management.

Let’s get Risk Reward Awards to have thousands of followers, and start to recognise great achievements. We are really relying on YOU!