Normally, I'm not one to push the "events agenda" on the blog, but I wanted to speak about this particular event, simply because the topics and the speaker lineup are right in line with what I typically yammer on about here.

Growing up, I never was one to want to share my toys.  I wasn’t one to throw a temper tantrum and take my toys home, but I never really liked the whole concept of people touching my stuff.  Thinking back on it, it all boiled down to the fact that I kept my toys in a certain working order, and I didn’t want little Jimmy MacMillan going and getting his scummy hands all over it.

In this day and age, very rarely do people buy anything without doing their research.  I recently went to a car dealership to help my mother lease a new sedan, and was fully prepared for a fight.  I had my negotiating strategy all lined up, I knew the ins and outs of lease agreements, I checked and double-checked the best pricing available.  Imagine my surprise when the car dealer sat us down and gave us a completely reasonable price right out of the gate.  This completely threw me off.  “Perhaps this was his intention” I thought, “He warms up to me then hits me with some hidden fees.”  But no, the whole process went very smoothly and honest.  I finally asked the dealer why he didn’t try to get a little more out of me.  He replied, “Because every customer that comes in here has done their research on the Web – they already know what the ‘best price’ is, so it doesn’t make sense to try and inflate the price.”

Last week, I spoke about how to set up a Risk Matrix and the considerations on how to determine risk scales. I mentioned how Risk methods provide the objectivity needed for many organizations, but a team is need to ultimately make the decision.

In this day and age, Risk is the biggest buzzword in the compliance industry.  We've talked about it, you can't go anywhere without hearing about it, and everyone's got a Risk-Based solution.  I think the primary reason why we focus on Risk Assessment and Risk Management, is because in business, we need to quantify our actions.  We can no longer rely purely on "gut instinct" to execute on events, whether Quality, Financial, Social or similar areas.  The world moves too fast, and one misstep can make or break you as a business.  Risk provides the objective metric to help the decision-making process.  But, you need to know how to use risk.