Let’s talk risk

Foster blame-free, bottom-up communication with RiskTalk

’Risk talk’ targets toxic cultures by fostering blame-free, bottom-up communication This year marked the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident and the eleventh anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster— vivid reminders of the complexity of managing corporate risks, responsibility, and values. Both companies had an official ‘Safety First’ principle, as have many other companies that […]

ValueS at Risk: Managing Risks in the Age of Corporate Purpose

The World Is Closed - Covid

Anette and Kurt presented RiskTalk at the seminar series of ETH Risk Center to a group of academics and risk practitioners. The lively discussion included questions such as how RiskTalk is different from other incident reporting systems; comments its scalability and reflections on the possibilities to deploy it in crisis situations such as the current […]

When Every Employee Is a Risk Manager

When Every Employee Is a Risk Manager

Risk management needs to be part of the daily lives of all employees up, down, and across an organization. Here’s how the Swiss electricity network achieves that. Read full story

The Risks You Can’t Foresee

Staple remover and stapler

No matter how good their risk management systems are, companies can’t plan for everything. Some risks are outside people’s realm of experience or so remote no one could have imagined them. Some result from a perfect storm of coinciding breakdowns, and some materialize very rapidly and on an enormous scale. These novel risks, as the authors call […]

Shifting with the sands: COVID-19 and changing values

Sand dunes

Anette’s last piece for Oxford Answers was referenced in the Financial Times. ‘In many ways, lockdown is intellectually easy . . . as a remedy it is clear-cut. The exit strategy is much less clear,’ she was quoted. This is her latest piece for us addressing that issue. In organizations (and societies) with competing cultural values when it comes […]