Bryan’s Blog

Ding the Bell

You have heard the term “Tone from the Top”. To operationalise your RAS you are going to need to “ding the bell” to make sure the leadership team are delivering the right tone. When I say leadership team, I’m talking the broader leadership team, not the Executive that worked with the Board to establish the

Map It

You have your top-notch RAS and you are ready to devolve decision making by operationalising it. My number one tip for operationalising your RAS comes from reading a book first published in 1946. It is called Administrative Behaviour, A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organisations by Herbert A. Simon. Simon is a Nobel Prize

Rolling Out – Craps

Craps is a gambling game using dice. It became well-known to me from the Hollywood movies of mid last century when players gathered around a Craps table and rolled and cheered or expressed their frustration at loss after loss. Before you start rolling out your Risk Appetite Statement (RAS), and devolving decision making to evolve

Devolve to Evolve

In their McKinsey article “Decision-making: how leaders can get out of the way”, Iskandar Amino, Aaron De Smet and Kanika Kakkar highlight the need to devolve decision making for organisations to become more agile. One thing they did not mention was that devolved decision making needs communication about the organisation’s appetite for risk in certain

Expectations Management

I’m back from a wonderful six-week trip to Canada and the US visiting family and friends. As always, I like to write a blog about risk management from the experiences I have when on holiday. Some of our activities had a risk element to them, for example, boat camping in northern British Columbia and taking