Thanks for reading and commenting!

I believe if most of us consider about these risks earlier, we can avoid unexpected to happen.

Question though..are the residual risks actually new risks vs. remnants of the original? E.g. putting down the mat eliminates the risk of slipping on the tub surface, but introduces the risk of the mat giving way – a new risk introduced by the mitigation of the original risk.

Maybe it boils down to the level of granularity in the risk management process. How granular is granular enough? Thoughts?

Thanks for the great comment!

Additionally, I’ve observed that people only think of personal risk in terms of its residual risk. I’ve included a link about inherent and residual at the bottom of this comment.

For example, people do not think there is any risk of slipping in the bath tub because they are using a bathmat therefore presume there is no risk in taking a shower. However, bathtubs are inherently slippery; the mat – a control – reduces the inherent risk. This creates a false awareness of risks. Because there is no falling, people do not even identify that a (low residual) risk even exists.

Alternatively, I suppose walking around in a panic because of all the inherent risks around us is probably not a good idea either.

http://riskczar.com/2005/11/28/inherent-and-residual-risks/

Trevor Levine

That’s a great question – why IS it so uncommon?

I’m sure there are lots of reasons, but one that made a lot of sense to me is one that Craig has touched on in a couple of posts from the past summer.

When there’s so many things that we can invest in to better our business, it’s hard to justify investing in managing a risk that may or may not end up hampering our operations. With risk management, you’re setting up processes and procedures for something A) that will probably not have an immediate effect on your organization B) that may never have an effect on your operations and C) for which effectiveness is often hard to measure.

We all want value for our investments and we would certainly like some measurability attached to our efforts. That’s often hard to quantify – especially when we’re talking about proactive risk management efforts as opposed to post-risk reactive ones.

Will be keeping an eye out for your future posts on the topic!

Cheers,
Kristen

Another great post! I think it’s great for us to look at risk and risk management in a way that makes it hit a little closer to home. If we can identify risk in our own lives, hopefully we can relate to it better and make risk management more of who we are rather than something we do.

Cheers,
Kristen