Get a read on risk.

Tom Cooper is currently an Assistant Professor at Memorial University in the area of strategic management. As a member of ClearRisk Board of Advisors, Tom’s research and blogging focuses primarily on the interplay between strategy, risk and compliance as well as their effects on corporate responsibility. ‘Strategic Risk as an Element of Operational Risk’ is the fourth in this ongoing series.

Although the Basel II guidance on strategic risk is regulatory driven, this definition of strategic risk provides little assistance on how strategic risk might be identified and analyzed. There is also considerable potential overlap with the standard Basel II definition of operational risk, which is: “the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events”.

Risk management is much wider than simple financial or operational risk. Concepts such as ‘strategic risk management’, ‘integrated risk management’ and ‘enterprise risk management’ now describe the wider application of such thinking, tools and techniques.

There is a common view that strategic risk is about managing risk ‘strategically’ rather than examining strategic risk as a category similar to operational, financial and other risk areas. This common view causes confusion and may be one of the reasons that strategic risk is not further researched or specifically managed.

On a recent family vacation to Disney World, my mind couldn’t help but wander back to the office as I walked around the various theme parks.

I have met Disney’s risk manager, Stephen Wilder, in the past and have seen him speak on risk management at Disney. I have also noticed various aspects of it here on previous trips, but this time, something occurred to me that hadn’t before.

Please note that we've updated this blog post! Please see the current versions: "The Importance of Risk Mapping" and "How to Build a Risk Map". 

A risk map prioritizes a particular identified risk according to its significance and likelihood and further goes on to sort the risk into four distinct quadrants. The purpose of a risk map is to identify, quantize and qualify a group of business risks which could impact a company’s ability to accomplish its business strategies.

Obviously a risk map is complex business and you need to know how to go about it.