Archive for Management Thinking
… profession or not?
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Things have been fairly hectic since my return from Toronto. A new client engagement to get started, not to mention a number of late nights watching the FIFA World Cup, have distracted me from posting here.
While catching up on my reading I came across this article in Risk Magazine. The quoted comments are in response to the question “What do you think are the significant challenges facing the risk profession in Australia?”
“Our greatest challenge is that we are not really a profession and do not always behave as professionals.”
That was how Grant Purdy started his response. Grant is the Chair of the Standards Australia/New Zealand Committee on Risk Management. This is the group that led the production of AS4360, on which the bulk of ISO31000 is based. Take a look at his CV (linked below) and you will see that is a practitioner not just a theorist or bureaucrat.
He continues as follows …
“By way of contrast it would not, for example, be possible for me to practice as an accountant or an engineer without proper training and a universally recognised qualification … I would not trust the servicing of my car to an unqualified mechanic and yet many organisations trust their entire strategy for managing risk with someone who has never worked in that area before or who cannot, for example, describe a risk correctly …”
Not only is this often true for Risk Managers, but too often for BC Managers. No universally recognised qualification – but numerous competing certification bodies. No need for experience, rote learning and reciting the text in the exam will suffice.
A number of other observers in the area have made similar observations on the subject. I have included the links below.
- Nat Forbes provides an interesting litany of the various competing certifications in BC
- Trevor Levine talks about the same aspect in the RM field
- John Glenn takes the debate to a specific industry sector in his home in Florida.
Where we do require some degree of certification for a BC (or Risk) Manager, too often we find that these people are not doing the real work but tasking others. Lawyers and Accountants actually do the specific work of their profession, of course there are different levels and the heavy lifting is done by the junior folks. Too often in Risk and BC the heavy lifting is sent to be done by local ‘co-ordinators’ and other non-certified folks.
In particular John Glen’s post targets one of the central issues – are we talking ‘Risk Management’ or the management of risk?
Grant Purdy explains it this way …
“There is also one other, profound and associated challenge we face, that is concerned with , quite simply, how we describe ourselves and what we do. If we continue to describe what we do as risk management and ourselves as risk managers, then we will never advance our profession and enhance its standing. We must realise that we do not manage risk – that is the job of others. Our role is to help, assist and sometimes cajole them to manage risk more effectively.”
If we want to be professionals we first need a profession. Not just the single training and certification approach – but professionals actually doing the skilled work rather than oversight of frameworks and compliance processes.
Are we looking at this the wrong way?
Has BCM and RM become a governance and compliance profession?
Is the management of risk and continuity simply just another aspect of the practice/profession of management?
References/Links
Risk Magazine, June 2010, Issue 75
Grant Purdy – Broadleaf Capital International
John Glen Post on risk certifications
Trevor Levine, Riskczar post on certification
Nathaniel Forbes post on certification in BC
… competence and disclosure (Part 2)
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In the first part of this series I talked about the path from blissful ignorance to ‘Unconscious Competence’ – and how that could be applied to thinking about BCM and Resilience.
The focus of this post is about using a different model to explore how we can learn more about ourselves and our professional programs.
One of the benefits of having a degree in Sociology (and Psychology) is that it covered all these models and a laid the groundwork for this type of approach to the concept of resilience.
The model is called the Johari Window. The model has been around for 50 years and is primarily used for an individual to better understand themselves and their communication/relationships.
A basic representation is shown in the graphic. There are several different label that can be applied, these are the ones I use. The key point to understand is that all four quadrants will not be the same size, and we need to make the known to self areas larger. The 4 quadrants are;
- Known to self and others. Often referred to as the ‘Open Area’ or ‘Arena’
- This is the place where we can interact with others
- This area tends to start small (in new situations) then expand.
- Unknown to self but known to others – my ‘Blindspot’
- Not a productive area, what you might label the region of blissful ignorance about ourselves
- Unknown to either
- What former US Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld described as “unknown unknowns”
- Unknown to others but known to me
- I label this area ‘Facade’ as it represents the aspects about ourselves that we do not share, or disclose, to others.
As I said earlier, the aim of the game is to increase the productive operating area – the Arena – this is achieved in two ways;
- you disclose things that you know about yourself that you currently conceal, moving the shade down, and
- in other words you ‘tell’ things
- by listening to feedback on yourself, thus moving the shades to the right.
- you ‘ask’ for feedback
So, lets apply this to our BCM activities. First I will disclose something you may not know about me – I am a consultant who offers a number of forensic BCM services – so you can view these comments as self-serving if you want.
The whole right-hand side column represents what we do not know and live in blissful ignorance of. We can reduce some of the “unknown unknowns” by reading, attending seminars, publication of our own experiences and generally exposing ourselves to, and helping to shape, other people’s thinking in this field. Hopefully this blog contributes in this area.
There are some “known unknowns” (as Mr Rumsfeld would say) being that which other people know and you have not discovered yet.
So let me offer what I think is one of the single most common cases in this area. Work from home has never been a sustainable BC strategy for the majority of organisations. The linked piece is also a little self-serving but relevant anyway, looking at the experience in the recent UK snow storms.
There will be a range of things in our programs that we do not want to know the reality of – in my experience a lot of them relate to the fact that the designated recovery strategies are not sustainable beyond 2-3 days and the business will go bust anyway.
I have worked for clients where this knowledge about limitations in the program was not in the ‘blindspot’ but in the ‘facade’. The BC folks knew their strategies and plans where all “fantasy document” but they presented them to Executives as valid.
We learn about our programs the same way we learn about ourselves. We need to disclose information and invite feedback. You are unlikely to get the best possible feedback from internal reviews, nor from reviews by the people who sold you the methodology/software you are basing your approaches on.
It is also helpful to differentiate feedback and assessments on the process you have followed and the outcomes/artefacts you have in place. If your aim is capability, then you need to get feedback on overall capability.
Exercises of your BC capabilities can be a good way to disclose and discover, but not if they are stage managed to ensure success and confirmation of the plans and strategies. An exercise should be done to rehearse people in roles and to verify that strategies and plans are valid. It must be accepted as a legitimate outcome to find that they are not valid.
It is all about disclosure, discovery and being willing to listen to (and act on) the feedback from others – both at a personal and program level.
Do you encourage external reviews of your programs?
Any effective review activities that you would share with others?
