Valuing your picture collection

The outcome picture collection replaces a ‘standard consequence scale’. You have now set the ‘risk management context’. At this point you’ve done the hard and important work for risk management in business planning, even though there isn’t yet a single risk. The outcome picture collection is useful for more than risk management.
What to read first: First steps to confidence: Find the unit outcomes that matter
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The outcome picture collection replaces a ‘standard consequence scale’.

When discussing risks, you will point to a specific picture as the potential consequence of an unplanned event or wrong assumption. You use the pictures in the same way as you are expected to use a ‘consequence scale’ or ‘consequence matrix’. In the language of the International Standard ISO 31000, the pictures are the ‘consequence criteria’.

Risk specialists may be concerned that your consequence criteria are non-standard and unique to your unit. No-one will be able to compare and add ratings across units. As a unit manager trying to assure the outcomes of your business plan, that isn’t your problem. For the concerned risk specialists, the Clear Lines on Audit and Risk have a much better idea than comparing and adding ratings on standard scales.

You have now set the ‘risk management context’.

In the formal vocabulary of risk management, you have completed the necessary steps in ‘Setting the context’, specifically identifying the objectives and developing the ‘consequence criteria’.

You might have chosen to invest some more time to make your collection of pictures smaller and more elegant. You can come back to that now or at any time in future. You might make the extra effort if the picture collection is to be seen by an audience. If not, you don’t need to do that the first time around.

At this point you’ve done the hard and important work for risk management in business planning, even though there isn’t yet a single risk. The outcome picture collection is useful for more than risk management.

The outcome picture collection replaces a ‘standard consequence scale’, and is a key part of risk management. The collection will be useful for all sorts of conversations with the boss, including conversations about your unit’s past performance and future prospects.

‘Risk’ is nothing other than the uncertainty of the outcomes on the objectives. The objectives are fundamental to all management, not just to ‘risk’. By re-generating the objectives and drawing outcome pictures, you will massively improve your confidence that your unit is paying attention to the right visions of success and of failure. Your pictures can be used for performance reporting, forecasting, and so on throughout the planning cycle. Within the risk work on your business plan, you will use the outcome pictures to explain the potential consequences of unplanned events and wrong assumptions. Those pictures will be understood instantly, and your message will be very clear.

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Drill-down articles

Outcome pictures and consequence scales An outcome picture collection can look like a standard consequence matrix. There are fundamental differences between an outcome picture collection and a standard consequence matrix.
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Parent articles

First steps to confidence: Find the unit outcomes that matter The first step is validating the unit’s objectives. ‘Risk’ is meaningless without the objectives. You understand each objective only when you see how success and failure are different. To see that difference, draw pictures. The outcome pictures must show your real world as it might be at the end of the planning period. You will use the outcome pictures to understand the significance of unplanned developments during the year.

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