Blog Post

Good morning. Monday is President’s Day so there’s no SITREP and then you’ll see a difference in the content and frequency of the free emails as the PRO plans kick in. So, starting Tuesday: PRO subscribers get the daily updates and customized risk metrics.General subscribers get the Friday round up only. You can try the PRO plan for free here. (And if you have any questions on what you get in the PRO plan, and how the customization works, please just hit reply and I’ll send you more information.) ...

Good morning. I got sucked into a supply chain vortex on Bloomberg this morning and did some digging around so you don’t have to. It turns out the world over-ordered during COVID and now, some supply chains are full of surplus goods and materials. This could be a great opportunity for some but signals big problems for others. However, it’s also a good reminder of why you need to take a historic view in your planning, something that toilet paper manufacturers understood, but Peleton didn’t. ...

Good morning. 🇳🇬 Nigerians Vote Nigerians will elect their new president and parliament this weekend with third-party candidate Peter Obi leading recent polls (ANAP Foundation). Obi has a strong following amongst younger Nigerians and a win would signal a break from some of the traditional political power structures in the country. However, there is still a significant margin for error in the polls and all three leading candidates have strong bases of support so a close election and run-off are still a significant possibility. ...

Note that things are moving very quickly with AI and OpenAI. CatGTP in particular so some of the issues below may have been fixed by the time you read this. (Sadly, not the bits that involve humans.) Some things to think about before you dive into GTP3 Like most of us, I love new toys. And like many others, I’ve been playing with OpenAIs tools since access opened up last year. With GTP4 scheduled for release soon and rumors that Google and Facebook both have pending AI releases, a lot will happen with AI in the near future. ...

(Read more about the origins of the risk metrics project here and here) The Risk Metrics White Paper The risk metrics project has come into sharper focus over the last couple of weeks and I’m now comfortable with the foundation of the system and how to manage the data. I’m still a little unsure as to which metrics will be most useful but I have an initial set of 12 to start with and user feedback will be the best judge of what’s relevant. ...

I chatted with OpenAI’s Chatbot the other day and asked it some questions about risk management. The answers were clear, nuanced and thoughtful, supporting all the hype surrounding the tool. It’s a text compiler so therefore not an analytical machine for the purposes of risk analysis – other tools of that kind will come on the scene eventually but I’m writing a paper as to why that’s a little ways off yet – but there are some uses I can see in the risk management space. ...

It’s no secret that I love standards (I even confessed to this in a previous blog post). However, there’s a problem: as soon as you introduce a standard, you’re in danger of turning things into a compliance exercise. Initially, that might not sound so terrible. If you’re compliant with a risk management standard, you’ll be managing your risks properly, right? Unfortunately not. Because compliance, or anything else that can be reduced to a ‘check the box exercise,’ very quickly moves the focus from outputs to inputs. So, as long as you have written the procedure, conducted the assessment, and established a governance board, you’ve complied with the requirement set out in the standard. But that doesn’t mean that the procedure is fit for purpose, that the assessment effectively evaluated the risks, or that there’s effective governance in place. It just means you’ve checked off these requirements in the standard. ...

*The Signal and The Noise Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t by Nate Silver *is the 2012 best-seller from the then New York Times columnist who now runs the FiveThirtyEight election analysis and prediction site in the US. TL;DR – This is a great read that explains why and how you need to mix statistics and experience in your predictions and decision-making. It can feel a little technical and heavy on the math at first glance, but Silver explains everything clearly, making it an easy read, given the subject matter. ...

Something that’s very hard to do as a consultant is to say,* ‘I don’t know,’ *or confess that you don’t understand something. But you’ve got to overcome any discomfort and learn how to do this because it’s critical that you’re honest about your knowledge gaps if you genuinely want to understand an organization or situation. But the problem is that this is hard to do when you’ve positioned yourself as an expert, and someone’s brought you in as a problem solver. So you’ll feel self-conscious if one of the first things the client hears you say is, ‘I don’t understand that. Please explain’. ...