5 Easy Steps for Better Sleep
There are a few things that likely keep you up at night. Maybe it is losing a key person on staff, unforeseen budget cuts, or a public affairs crisis.
Not only are you losing sleep, but these things also pose risk to your organization, potentially crippling your team and causing catastrophic impact.
Don’t say, “I will worry about it when it happens.” You need to be proactive. You need a risk management plan.
If you want better sleep tonight (and I know you do!), follow these 5 easy steps and start managing your risk today.
1.List your risk events and the possible consequences. Seriously, get your team together and think worst case scenario. That will get you started.
2.Complete a risk analysis. Your analysis should be centered on the severity of the impact if the event occurs and the likelihood of the event happening. Risk analysis can be easily accomplished by assigning points using a matrix like this one:
3. Rank and prioritize your risk events. This will help you focus your risk management efforts. Rank and prioritization is easy if you used the matrix and point assignments method in Step 2.
4. Focusing on priority, develop responses and contingencies to avoid and mitigate your risks. Responses are the specific actions you will take to avoid or mitigate the risk. Contingencies are planned actions to take if the risk cannot be avoided or the risk cannot be mitigated enough.
5. Routinely come back to your risk management plan. Are your risks still relevant? Has the probability or severity changed? Are your responses to avoid or mitigate the risks working? Are your contingency actions still viable? Do you have any new risks to manage?
Just follow those 5 easy steps and you will sleep better knowing that you have thought about your risk exposure and that you have a management plan in place. Now, go get some rest!
