Keeping Score - a piece by Mike Lutomski
- By Gareth Byatt
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- 11 Dec, 2017
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By Mike Lutomski - formerly of NASA (former Risk Manager for the International Space Station)
When I mention “keeping score” I’m not talking about a sporting event you may be betting on, nor am I talking about the last time your spouse took the dog for a walk or folded the laundry. I’m talking about risk management. A lot of people get hung up on scoring a qualitative risk, or where you rank risks from top to bottom. Truthfully, “hung up” is probably an understatement if you’re in a large organization with an active risk process. People will get obsessed and over-focus on the likelihood and consequence score of a particular risk.
Scoring and ranking risks is important, after all it’s a decision support tool, or a management tool where it should help inform important decisions on where to spend resources and focus attention, but these steps of analyzing risks is certainly not the point of risk management.
Risk management is an important communication system where you are trying to gain attention to a potential issue. Trying to get more resources and/or communicate this potential future problem with management and your peers.
Say you use a 5x5 risk matrix, where the vertical axis is likelihood, and the horizontal axis is consequence; it’s not important is your risk is a 3x4 or a 4x3 or even a 5x5. If you’ve entered into the risk register, and have the opportunity to present it to management in a coherent manner, you’ve won. You’ve communicated this potential issue, discussed ways to mitigate it, discussed the resources required including the time and money that it will take to avoid this risk from being realized. It’s not important if some risk management guru or even your peers agree with the “score” of the risk, it’s only important if you’ve gotten attention on the risk!
Scoring and ranking risks is important, after all it’s a decision support tool, or a management tool where it should help inform important decisions on where to spend resources and focus attention, but these steps of analyzing risks is certainly not the point of risk management.
Risk management is an important communication system where you are trying to gain attention to a potential issue. Trying to get more resources and/or communicate this potential future problem with management and your peers.
Say you use a 5x5 risk matrix, where the vertical axis is likelihood, and the horizontal axis is consequence; it’s not important is your risk is a 3x4 or a 4x3 or even a 5x5. If you’ve entered into the risk register, and have the opportunity to present it to management in a coherent manner, you’ve won. You’ve communicated this potential issue, discussed ways to mitigate it, discussed the resources required including the time and money that it will take to avoid this risk from being realized. It’s not important if some risk management guru or even your peers agree with the “score” of the risk, it’s only important if you’ve gotten attention on the risk!
I was delighted to be invited by the Municipality of Bordeaux in France to take part in their resilience month ( le mois de la résilience) in mid-October 2024 - just as I did the previous year, in October 2023.
We held very interesting in-person discussions about how my Urban 2.0 framework and system can be used by cities and towns around the world, and also the release of the UNDRR Global Assessment Report, Special Report 2024, which I was delighted to contribute towards.
The municipality of Bordeaux is continuing to pursue some excellent work in urban resilience, which I will be profiling in due course...
We held very interesting in-person discussions about how my Urban 2.0 framework and system can be used by cities and towns around the world, and also the release of the UNDRR Global Assessment Report, Special Report 2024, which I was delighted to contribute towards.
The municipality of Bordeaux is continuing to pursue some excellent work in urban resilience, which I will be profiling in due course...
Almost half of Small Island Developing States' (SIDS) populations reside in urban areas. Research into urban resilience and urban planning tends to focus on cities in large nations, and only a relatively small amount of specific research on SIDS cities currently exists. However, much of the general urban resilience research is applicable to SIDS, as long as context is considered.
This paper focuses on ways to implement measures that will foster resilient and dynamic cities in SIDS. Ensuring good policy action to build, maintain and continuously improve these cities is key to achieving sustainable development and resilient prosperity as set out in the Outcome Document of the Fourth International Conference for Small Island Developing States (SIDS4).
I am delighted to be one of the presenters at the SIDS Future Forum (with a focus on how to build resilient and dynamic cities on small islands).
With growing challenges like climate change, debt burdens, and dwindling resources, they desperately need an actionable, doable, and ambitious roadmap for the next decade. 2024 is an important year for SIDS, with the SIDS4 conferencetaking place in May.
You can access details about the Forum on the Island Innovation website, here.
With growing challenges like climate change, debt burdens, and dwindling resources, they desperately need an actionable, doable, and ambitious roadmap for the next decade. 2024 is an important year for SIDS, with the SIDS4 conferencetaking place in May.
You can access details about the Forum on the Island Innovation website, here.
The second edition of the Disasters Avoided Newsletter is live. You can access it here.
I am delighted to announce that a new Newsletter has commenced - the Disasters Avoided Newsletter.
You can read edition #1 here. This first edition is an introduction to our work, containing a summary of some of the work we are undertaking, links to case studies and interviews with people about different aspects of avoiding disasters.
You can read edition #1 here. This first edition is an introduction to our work, containing a summary of some of the work we are undertaking, links to case studies and interviews with people about different aspects of avoiding disasters.
I am delighted to announce the launch of a new website, disastersavoided.com. In this website, myself and my colleagues Ilan Kelman and Ana Prados are compiling case studies to describe how disasters have been, are being and need to be avoided through a symphony of action. We are also adding supporting information in the shape of interviews, papers, articles and links to Newsletter editions...
I was delighted to be invited by the Municipality of Bordeaux in France to take part in their resilience week ( la semaine de la résilience) in mid-October 2023.
We held a very interesting in-person round table discussion with citizens about how disasters can be avoided.
The municipality of Bordeaux is pursuing some excellent resilience work, which I will be profiling in due course...
We held a very interesting in-person round table discussion with citizens about how disasters can be avoided.
The municipality of Bordeaux is pursuing some excellent resilience work, which I will be profiling in due course...
I was delighted to be a Presenter on a webinar held on 18 July 2023 led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), which discussed the question: ‘Can disasters be avoided?’
We reviewed approaches being taken to prevent hazards from turning into disasters, including examples and how innovation is helping countries, cities and communities prevent adverse fallouts from hazard events.
You can access the webinar and download all presentations here.
We reviewed approaches being taken to prevent hazards from turning into disasters, including examples and how innovation is helping countries, cities and communities prevent adverse fallouts from hazard events.
You can access the webinar and download all presentations here.
My involvement in infrastructure continues, including editing the February 2023 Newsletter of the IRM Infrastructure Group, which you can access here.
I continue to serve on the committee of the IRM Infrastructure Group, and part of my role is to coordinate the Group Newsletter.
The December 2022 edition, which covers a wide variety of infrastructure-related topics, is available here...
The December 2022 edition, which covers a wide variety of infrastructure-related topics, is available here...