how to build a risk culture

[Music] hi i'm suzanne matson welcome to this whiteboard session on building a risk culture when we talk about risk culture we mean a team's attitude towards risk and their behaviors towards risk you see our attitudes shapes our behaviors that forms our culture but the culture also influences our behaviors and our attitude a good risk culture means that there is alignment between these three it means that the team is aware of how much risk we want to take and they act accordingly but why is this important well imagine for instance that you work for a company like airbus or boeing their risk culture is quite conservative they do not like risks because it's all about safety first in that instance of course it's important that the team takes appropriate risk and it's also important that it's not just me as a team leader or project manager but everybody who have the right behaviors this helps to promote shared ownership and buy-in from everybody not just for me as a project manager but how do you begin to build such a culture the first step is to become aware of what the risk appetite is what's the risk appetite of the organization what's the risk appetite of this particular project in other words how much risk can we afford to take can we afford for this project to go wrong if not then we have a very low risk appetite once you've established that you need to look at implementing the right risk management processes that support your level of risk appetite so in practical terms how often are we going to review our risks who will be part of reviewing the risks how we're going to do it and where we're going to store it etc then i recommend that you run collaborative risk workshops because again this is not just about you as a project manager how your behaviors are it's about the team's behaviors and again when you involve everybody you get that ownership and you get that culture throughout the organization so get into the room with post-it notes and brainstorm everything that could go wrong lastly you also need to enable open and honest communication about risks in some organizations it's not really acceptable to talk about that which could go wrong you need to change that because if we can't talk about risks well then they're not surfacing and then we can't do anything about them and lastly reward the right behavior so if you see team members who are acting in the right way who are really aware of risks and addressing them then do reward them in that way you reinforce the culture that you would like thank you for watching please visit us again at projectmanager.com [Music] you