independent REVIEW
What's Involved
Many of our customers have their own, well-developed arrangements for dealing with risk and uncertainty and arriving at important decisions. From time to time, though, it can be valuable to test the effectiveness and value of those arrangements via an impartial expert review. The trigger may be a particularly important decision, a challenge to a major decision, or a demand to slash the budget by 50% without compromising the service offered.
How's it done
We are constantly surprised by
- how seldom many organisations pause to look back at a sample of their decisions, and ask how they might have made them better, and
- how easily activities of a protective or preventive nature escape serious 'zero-based' strategic and/or budgetary review.
When organisations DO decide to review their arrangements, the first people they look to for help tend to be experts in their own or a similar line of business.
what can go wrong
In our experience the following are all important:
- sub-optimal decisions based on weak evidence expose the organisation to future liability
- large areas of activity and expenditure develop an unchallenged life of their own because they are seen as 'too difficult' to unpick
- opportunities are missed or unnecessary risks perpetuated because reviewers are too close to the activity in question.
The banks all had expert committees poring over their lending and investment decisions before the crash of 2008. The risk of default from sub-prime mortgage borrowers was clearly recognised. But 'group think' prevented the likelihood and scale of its effects from being reliably assessed and acted on in many banks.
how we help
When it comes to risk it really pays to complement expertise in your own domain with a view from quite outside. That view can be particularly valuable when informed, as in our case, by in-depth knowledge of how risk and uncertainty are managed in many other walks of life. We combine 'first principles' review of an organisation or activity with review of relevant practice and experience elsewhere - and we make sure that 'relevant practice' is not limited to businesses or activities just like the one in question.
Brief information on some of the 'public domain' independent advisory roles to which Tony has been appointed - several of them on a personal basis, and some before establishing TTAC - is provided in the link on the right.