Seen it all?

The ‘Seen it all’ stream is for you have audit or risk management training or experience.

The content in the ‘Seen it all’ stream assumes that you are familiar with basic concepts and vocabulary, so they are not explained except when there is a common confusion or contentious interpretation to address. That actually happens a lot in risk management.

The ‘Seen it all’ pages also have a lot of references to authoritative sources, especially ISO 31000, and assume that you have access to those sources.

If all that provokes some uncertainty about reaching your objective, you may want to start with the ‘New to this’ stream , where everything is explained without assuming what you know already. There are some links across the streams, but they always open in a separate window.

These are the series and topics that are ready and waiting for you if you’ve Seen it all. There are more in the pipeline.

Risk in work unit business planning (Series index)

What is Risk Management? (Series index)

Risk is not a mysterious hypothetical substance. Unlike radioactive waste, it does not require a management system. You should never ask how much of it there is. Risk is nothing other than the possibility that your world might not end up the way you meant it to be. To manage risk is to understand and act on the effects of uncertainty on objectives. ‘Objectives’ are the preferred outcomes of an activity. ‘Effects’ can be positive or negative. ‘Uncertainty’ includes all kinds of unknowns, including unknown unknowns. ‘Act on’ includes many kinds of response.

Discrete risk management processes within an enterprise (Series index)

Risk management happens across the whole of any enterprise, whether or not it is formalised and explicit. Any discrete risk management process needs to have a definite scope. There may be multiple discrete risk management processes across the enterprise. Discrete and independent risk management processes are the work-horses within formal risk management, even if they are not recognised at all in ISO 31000 or COSO ERM.