Thomas M. Bragg on Business Risk Management

I learned a lesson this week. I implemented new technologies (yeah, that’s right – plural) and suffered some embarrassment because I didn’t manage the risks well. Here’s what went down..

.

My Story

I have a day job at a company that doesn’t allow the use of social media sites by employees. I write my blog posts and supporting Tweets during non-work hours. I found that the schedule has a negative impact on building up the following of my blog via Twitter so I researched tweet-scheduling tools and started using Twaitter. During early testing, I noticed an improvement in my website’s metrics and felt comfortable using the tool to pre-schedule tweets. I felt good to go on the tweet scheduling front…

.

One of my goals for my blog is to maintain a consistent editorial calendar with two posts per week on Mondays and Thursdays. So far I’ve done OK with getting two posts out most weeks, but I haven’t performed well on getting the posts out on my scheduled days. As part of my day job, I do a fair amount of business travel and my trips were impacting my blog schedule. There is a solution. The fix is to get one or two posts “in the can” - written ahead of time – so I could utilize the capability WordPress offers for pre-scheduling posts to publish automatically. I hadn’t really used the scheduling function, but it’s just clicking a couple of buttons. How hard can it be? I felt good to go on the post scheduling front, too…

.

So I’ve got the technologies identified that will solve my problems. Life is good, and I’m ready to do some writing during the weekend for Monday’s post. I write the post and set the scheduled publish date and time in WordPress. I copy the permalink from the post and enter it into bit.ly to get the shortened URL for my tweets. Then I go into Twaitter and write a few posts. I schedule them to go out during the course of the day on Monday with the first tweet happening about 15 minutes after the post is scheduled to hit the web.

.

I go to work on Monday confident that my post will publish and the associated tweets will go out. I check my website Monday morning and notice that the post didn’t publish. Strange, but no problem – I must have forgotten to click the “Publish” button. Oh well. I just go in and publish it manually. I can’t access Twaitter, but I don’t need to, right? The permalink is the same so the shortened URLs should be just fine…

.

I have some personal business away from home on Monday night. I don’t check in with Twitter because I’m sure that everything is clicking and purring without a hitch. I’m sure tweeps are clicking and retweeting, subscribers are subscribing…

.

Tuesday night rolls around and I check in with my Twitter account. I’ve got a couple of direct messages from @De_Risky letting me know that my links appear to be broken and are labeled as spam. Shit! Not a good thing for a early stage blog who’s trying to build a following. I send out a couple of tweets with the original short link and apologies, but the link still doesn’t work. I create a new short link and tweet again, apologizing sincerely to my followers. Tom screwed up big time…

.

So let’s take a step back and review Tom’s lesson in terms of the risk management process…

.

The Assumptions

• I assumed that since I was comfortable with new technologies individually, I could effectively implement them together.
• I assumed that I would not make a mistake in using the tools.

.
The Risk

• If I don’t execute the new technologies correctly, I risk alienating existing followers and losing potential new followers/subscribers.

.

Estimated Probability

• In my mind, the probability is pretty low. But if I had an objective second set of eyes, the real probability would probably be close to 50% – a pretty high number.

.

Potential Impact

• Since my blog is non-revenue producing at this point, I can’t assign a dollar impact. But I can tell you that the potential impact in terms of reputation and future follower/subscriber growth is high, in my opinion.

.

(What Should Have Been) The Plan

• I have a high impact risk with a 50% chance of occurrence. It is a risk that should be managed and planned for.
• The plan should have been to test each tool independently and repeatedly to prove that I was competent with them.
• Then I should have tested with the tools together to make sure I understood the interactions.
• Lastly, I should have given some thought to potential ‘gotchas’ (more risks, right?) and at least considered some potential contingencies.

.

Obviously, I didn’t walk the walk. I failed at managing my risk with my blog posting and related tweeting….

.

Here are the points I want you to take away from my story:

1. There is potentially significant risk associated with implementing new technologies – even the seemingly simple implementations.
2. Managing the risks doesn’t have to be an onerous, burdensome process, but it needs to exist.
3. Planning for and mitigating the risks can be very simple and straightforward – and much less painful than the potential impact.

.

That’s my story. Please note that none of the applications I mentioned had any faults. I still use them all. The embarrassment still stings a little – a good thing, I suppose. Do you have other examples you can share with us? I’d love to hear about them.