Risk Roadshow

Interesting concept of a risk road show to introduce young children to the mathematics of probability: Risk Roadshow.

Some Notes on Consulting and Consultants

Some notes I jotted down while browsing a consulting text by Fiona Czerniawska.  Some of the thoughts are hers, some are mine. Useful considerations for risk consultants:

• Consulting is about knowledge transfer from consultant to client.
• When deciding which consultant to hire, companies look for enormous depth of knowledge in the areas their company is interested in.  General knowledge does not cut it.
• Of all consultancies, process oriented ones are where executives are least impressed because the client and consultant level of expertise is not much different, and ‘consulting’ work is mostly facilitation.
• Some (not all) consulting engagements are about solving a problem.
• Some types of consulting services:
  • delivering a specific service
  • implementing a particular system
  • creating a successful solution
• Firms hire consultants because they need the input but don’t want to replicate the skill.  They don’t need the skill in-house on a permanent basis.
• Consultants provide new energy and momentum.
• Consultants are hired as a source of best practice information not available in-house.
• Consultants are also hired to provide championing of a sponsor’s project internally, something that sometimes is not possible from someone internal. 
• The depth of knowledge required from a consultant is specialist knowledge.

Choose One: Risk Management or Crisis Management

The title of this post is adapted from a comment made by the CRO of Fidelity Investments, who wrote:

“Corporate leaders recognise that over the long term, the only alternative to risk management is crisis management. And crisis management is much more expensive, time-consuming, and painful.”