How you strategically manage risk

Tip of the day!

Have the courage to pursue success, but understand and manage your risks.

Theme of the day

If we consider a simplified four-step project management methodology, we can summarize that blogs People #3, #4 and #5 highlight the first step, that of initiating a new project or a primary task. The remaining three project management steps emphasize motivating ourselves and others, the implementation of the project, and maintaining the project artefacts. We discuss each of these project phases from three different perspectives: interpersonal/intrapersonal, achievement, and leadership.

In blog People #3, we provided a more in-depth insight into one specific aspect of interpersonal communication, namely how you explore truth by forming and holding opinions, and how you reflect on many different viewpoints.

Blog People #4 provides you with information on how you make a decision.

This blog, People #5, unravels the secrets behind managing security risks. Isn’t that exciting! It is about achieving a balance between feeling comfortable with security risks that involve uncertainty, and, on the other hand, scrutinize potential difficulties related to a plan or strategy.

Let us continue with the case from our previous blog: solving a security breach in a newly developed web application. Before you can delegate the job to someone capable, you need to build a plan and feel comfortable enough. After all, there may be pitfalls and uncertainty. Do you agree? To have an impact on everyone involved, you need to outline your plan strategically.

We can clarify this through a game great business people and teleworkers play. It is the Game of how you strategically manage security risks.

Once again, if you also play this game according to the rules, then you have an impact.

The rules are:

Have the courage to pursue an impactful approach to the stated problem;
But also understand and manage the entailed risks and pitfalls of your plan or strategy.

In short:

If you have a strong need to take business risks combined with a tendency to analyze potential problems (probably), it enables you to formulate strategies and plans that have a high potential payoff. This behaviour makes you, from a strategic point of view, our hero in managing security risks.

Ask yourself

The following questions can help you to gain insights into how you deal with strategically managing security risks.

Imagine you need to solve a security breach in a web application. Before you can delegate the job to someone capable, you need to build a plan and feel comfortable enough to manage risks strategically.

“In general, are you rather cautious when you have to manage risks?” If you are cautious, then you tend to focus on the potential pitfalls of a plan without sufficiently taking risks.

If so, “Do you admit that when under a great deal of stress to make a decision, you tend to react a (little) impulsively by placing too much hope in a particular solution?”

Or

“Is it your tendency to take risks without sufficient analysis of the potential pitfalls and difficulties of the plan?”

If so, “Your need for risk may be compensation for fear. Can you identify this?”

Or

“Do you analyze the potential pitfalls of your plan or strategy while at the same time being willing to take risks?”

If this situation applies to you, then you are entirely in balance regarding strategically managing risks.

My next blog post is about a crucial management question. “Are you able to do your work as expected?” We make the bridge toward the second step of our simplified project management methodology. And that is Motivation.

Stay tuned!

Take care of yourself! Take care of each other!