developing solutions

The motivation for re-thinking your arrangements for dealing with risk and uncertainty may be some or all of

new and emerging threats or opportunities
recognition that the result of a major project or venture is uncertain, and determination to limit the downside and capture more of the upside, or
pressure on resources - for many of our customers, spending on embedded risk control arrangements accounts for a large proportion of their budgets (think of asset maintenance and renewal, control processes and procedures, any safeguarding or regulatory activity).

what's involved

To find the best solution for controlling risk and uncertainty you need to do two things:

develop some good ideas that address the key issues, and
evaluate which will work best.

how it's done

The 'optioneering' process starts with a search for ideas, which will typically explore

what are the 'root causes' of the issue the solution has to address
how others tackle similar issues
new and emerging opportunities
a range of solution strategies, from more people/process based to more engineering based solutions.

A good process will then evaluate these based on

clear criteria addressing what matters most to the organisation
thorough, objective evaluation of each option against the criteria, and
involvement of the key people who are interested in or affected by the decision to be made.

what can go wrong

This is fertile territory for sub-optimal solutions, and a lot of resources being used ineffectively. Typical reasons for this include

the solution chosen doesn't address the key causes, so doesn't work
in the absence of decent evidence, the evaluation gets based more on enthusiasm and personal preferences than on anything objective
the criteria used to rank the options don't reflect what really matters to the organisation or individual concerned

how we help

We help both with developing solution ideas and in evaluating which is best, in particular by

focusing the search for ideas clearly onto the key risks/uncertainties and their underlying causes
exploring practice in other organisations and often in other walks of life for dealing with parallel issues
setting up and structuring the evaluation criteria and process to reflect what matters most and bring fit for purpose evidence together to support the selection of a preferred solution approach.

You can seen an example of a simple framework for taking stock of and improving risk management arrangements (an original TTAC picture now embedded into the UK national fire service guidance on Integrated Risk Management planning) here.

Examples of TTAC projects involving exploration of approaches from many walks of life are contained in the first and last of the sample projects on our PROJECTS page.