Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Future of Today’s Risk Professional Guest

Future of Today’s Risk Professional Guest

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

What is a risk professional?

Risk management is an objective-focused concept. Risk professionals must, therefore, be a catalyst, an advocate, and trusted friend for driving superior organisational performance.

They must walk alongside executives, managers and staff to achieve organisational objectives by making better decisions under uncertainty, risk, and opportunities.

Strategy execution and organisational performance will be the critical success factors for risk professionals. They must create value for the organisation and be invited to take the ‘seat at the table’ at board and management meetings. They must work in collaboration and partnership with board members, executives, and managers to achieve the required outcomes through ruthless strategy execution and performance.

Risk professionals must provide value-added input in the corporate planning discussion rather than merely act as process keepers and custodians of the risk management process and framework.

They should have a high-level understanding of the strategies required throughout the organisational lifecycle, knowing whether the chosen strategy can be implemented given its resourcing and workforce capability and capacity, and knowing the likelihood and extent of organisational success given the opportunities, risks, and uncertainties.

What is the future of risk management?

Risk management must move beyond compliance. It must move away from the tick-the-box practice and avoid merely satisfying the regulator and legislator.

Risk management effectiveness decreases when the formality and structure of risk management increases.

A controlling environment with formal and compliance mechanisms will only result in risk management for compliance and downsides. Management will become risk-averse rather than being successful through opportunity-seeking and risk-taking. They practice defensive risk management instead.

Reporting and managing a list of risks (also known as “list management”) have been the pre-occupation of risk professionals. These actions do nothing to drive conversations, introspections, and achievement of organisational vision and mission. They are a distraction. It focuses people on the wrong things. Heat maps and wordy risk registers do not tell any worthy performance story that drives behaviour change.

Discuss performance information together with risk information at board and management meetings. Risk and performance must be intricately linked. If performance targets are unmet, know why and implement steps to overcome the poor performance.

Enhance the quality of the decision-making process and discussion with the integration of effective risk management.

Strategy execution is the future of risk management. Risk professionals are jointly responsible for the successful execution of organisational strategy.

Risk management, at its core, is good management. Its separation is unhelpful.

What are the skills today’s risk managers need?

When the role of risk professionals is to increase the likelihood of organisational success, they must know how the strategy is developed, the thinking behind strategy formulation, and knowing what it takes to deliver on that strategy.

It requires proactive engagement, conversations, and partnerships where they walk alongside management as a trusted friend, someone who will drive change and performance.

The skills and competence to facilitate these activities will be vital for risk professionals. They must also have a sound understanding of how the organisation works along its lifecycle.

BIO:

Patrick Ow is a Risk Specialist and Chartered Accountant with over 25 years of international risk management and corporate governance experience in the private, not-for-profit, and public sectors, and across different industries. He helps individuals and organisations make better decisions to achieve better results and outcomes as a corporate and personal trainer and coach at Practicalrisktraining.com.

He is also the founder of CreateMyJob.org, a social enterprise platform for job creation and community support.

Patrick has authored several eBooks including Strategic Risk Management Reimagined: How to Improve Performance and Strategy Execution, How to Improve the Performance of Collaborations, Joint Ventures, and Strategic Alliances: The Shared Risk Management Handbook and Things Parents Wish They Knew Earlier: The Family Risk Management Handbook.

Filed Under: Articles, CERM® Risk Insights, on Risk & Safety

About Greg Hutchins

Greg Hutchins PE CERM is the evangelist of Future of Quality: Risk®. He has been involved in quality since 1985 when he set up the first quality program in North America based on Mil Q 9858 for the natural gas industry. Mil Q became ISO 9001 in 1987

He is the author of more than 30 books. ISO 31000: ERM is the best-selling and highest-rated ISO risk book on Amazon (4.8 stars). Value Added Auditing (4th edition) is the first ISO risk-based auditing book.

« 15 Ways to Remove Operational Risk
Small Multiples for Characterization »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CERM® Risk Insights series Article by Greg Hutchins, Editor and noted guest authors

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Articles

  • test
  • test
  • test
  • Your Most Important Business Equation
  • Your Suppliers Can Be a Risk to Your Project

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy