Can Your Company’s Operations Cause a Black Swan Event?

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According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan events are rare, catastrophic events that many retrospectively assert could have been predicted and thus prevented. But can they? Could your company’s operational performance cause the next Black Swan tragedy?

Before we answer the question of whether or not your company’s operations could cause a Black Swan event, I need you to consider your organization’s risk tolerance as we’ll be defining the Black Swan event in those terms.

You see, Black Swan events reported by the media are defined by a much higher impact and scope than what most organization’s can tolerate. So with your organizations unique tolerance in mind, consider the following question sets regardless of how the event might be initiated:

Set 1

  • Does your company’s operations involve significant amounts of hazardous or potentially hazardous materials?
  • Does your company’s operations involve high energy systems or materials?
  • Does your company operate in an inhospitable environment such that inappropriate operations could result in harm to a large number of people or result in significant damage to assets or the environment?
  • Does your company provide a commodity without which a vital service would be impaired?
  • Does your company’s operations integrate with others such that a mishap could bring down a network supporting the provision of vital services?

Set 2

  • Could a relatively large number of people be impacted by an operational mishap at your company?
  • Could a significant asset loss be incurred by an operational mishap at your company?
  • Could a significant environmental impact result from an operational mishap at your company?

If you answered yes to any of the Set 1 and any of the Set 2 questions, your organization’s operations could cause what is for you a Black Swan event.

As a leader of a susceptible organization, your next questions become:

  • How can we recognize the rising risk of a Black Swan event?
  • How do we minimize our risk of causing a Black Swan event? and
  • How can we prepare for a Black Swan event now in an efficient, financially responsible way that balances cost and risk mitigation?

To help you answer these questions, we’ve prepared a FREE video training series: Preparing for the Black Swan. During this online training course, you’ll learn:

  • the warning flags of rising Black Swan risk
  • how to develop a healthy safety culture to minimize the risk of a Black Swan event
  • how to responsibly prepare for a Black Swan event through the implementation of protocols for responding to a Black Swan event should one occur, and
  • how to effectively monitor for rising Black Swan event risk
Access the Training Course Now!

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Risk Management – Protocols for Responding to Unexpected, Catastrophic Black Swan Events

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StrategyDriven Risk Management ArticleBlack Swans events are rare (low probability), catastrophic (high impact) incidents that are seemingly unpredictable, go unrecognized, or are deemed so unlikely as to not reasonably warrant expensive preventive measures. There characteristics include:

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Risk Management – Principles for Responding to Unexpected, Catastrophic Black Swan Events

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StrategyDriven Risk Management ArticleBlack Swans events are rare (low probability), catastrophic (high impact) incidents that are seemingly unpredictable, go unrecognized, or are deemed so unlikely as to not reasonably warrant expensive preventive measures. There characteristics include:

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Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

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 Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Risk Management – Principles for Responding to Unexpected, Catastrophic Black Swan Events for just $2!

Access the Article Now!

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Why have a Risk Management Program?

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Most people think of risk management as an insurance policy, the price paid to help prevent potentially negative outcomes from being realized by their company. Such a view leads to the conclusion that risk management is a business expense with a highly subjective value proposition.

We at StrategyDriven would suggest the insurance view of risk management is far too narrow. Instead, effective risk management enables a company to accelerate its business operations and to become more aggressive in the marketplace; approaches that in today’s fast paced environment is immeasurably valuable.

An analogy we use is that instead of correlating risk management to an insurance policy, leaders should think of it in terms of a high performance automotive breaking system. High performance breaks, such as those on racing cars, enable the driver to reach higher rates of speed while still maintaining the same level of safety as slower drivers whose cars have less capable breaking systems.

In the case of an effective risk management program, earlier warning of potentially adverse events occurs such that less costly adjustments can be made to avoid those risks; allowing the organization to speed its decisions and actions while maintaining the same risk profile as a company employing a less effective risk management program. Thus, an effective risk management system serves as both an insurance policy and a performance enhancer.

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

There is No Tradeoff With BYOD

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The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement has been portrayed as an impasse for organizations that must make tradeoffs between maintaining security and invading employee privacy.
This is an illusion — there is no tradeoff when you take the right approach to BYOD.

As a relatively young field spurred on by the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets, the BYOD space is in the process of reaching a common paradigm. In the meantime, organizations struggle to navigate a forest of mobile device management (MDM), enterprise mobility management (EMM) and other BYOD approaches that claim comparable benefits but don’t achieve them the same way.
Given the buzz and crowdedness of this field, some organizations simply don’t implement a BYOD solution, believing the medicine might be worse than the disease. This thinking is flawed and actually elevates the risk of data leaks, cybercrime and intellectual property theft.

A multi-persona approach to BYOD achieves the ideal balance of security and privacy, cost and flexibility, and choice for employees while overcoming the drawbacks of other BYOD approaches. With a multi-persona approach, there is no tradeoff.

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About the Author

Omer EifermanOmer Eiferman is Cellrox’s CEO. He is a graduate of Bar-Ilan University with a degree in Computer Science and Statistics, and was a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Omer has served in a variety of marketing, development and product management roles in technology companies. To read Omer’s complete biography, click here.