Risk managers must focus on reward, opportunity

Risk managers must focus more often on presenting to company management the opportunities and rewards of taking risks if they want the risk management profession to thrive in the future, panelists told people attending the RIMS Canada Conference Calgary Summit 2006.
Panelist Felix Kloman of Risk Management Reports said if corporate managers hear only from their risk managers about the dangers of risk or the constant need for risk avoidance then risk managers may not be the first people executives contact when they need advice related to decision-making.
Kloman said risk managers must avoid the perception within their companies that they are merely “nattering nabobs of negativity,” as former U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew once referred to journalists critical of the Nixon Administration.
Panelist Beaumont W. Vance, a senior enterprise risk manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc., related one story in which a company executive told the risk manager: “You’re the ones who tell us what not to do. I’m not going to call if I want to do something.” Vance said risk managers need to show they are also aware of the positive outcomes associated with taking risks.
“Why take risks?” asked panelist John Adams, a professor of geography at University College London. “There are rewards. Certainly we take risks for a purpose.”