Tech Wiz on risk and risk avoidance

Many years ago I used to do a lot more training of other people than I do now. I would work with customer’s to help them not only understand how to solve the problems they had but also to understand what they could change to fix future problems. I did a lot of ITIL and other types of operations planning, and eventually got into helping customers be more strategic. Strategic thinking is hard when you are troubleshooting.  I worked with teams to think strategically until they had to act tactically and then when the crisis was over, go back and do a strategic post-mortem. It worked in many cases, although one time I did have a boss who thought strategic post-mortem meant to take notes for the people’s reviews.

I stopped inviting him to the post-mortems. He didn’t like that and spent the next year trying to pay me back.

There is no easy button to use when you are in the midst of a crisis. You can go back to the ITSM words, like root cause analysis and eventual outcome modification. They effectively ask you to consider what you can do right now to move the problem to a new path, or what can you do to determine the actual cause of a problem. Both are strategies that are tried and true.

They work, most of the time.

The strategic thinking value is getting ahead of those problems. Risk is all about identification. Once identified risk is all about mitigation and contingency. But the best way to fix a risk issue is risk avoidance and that is where strategic thinking comes in. As we consider the reality of what strategy is and what we can do strategically we move away from solving problems and move towards removing problems. A problem never faced is always the first one solved!