Risk Management (or not)

Reasons to Disregard Risks

• Superstition. "Speak of the Devil and he shall appear."
• Magical Thinking. "If we don't talk about it, it can't happen". And its corollary:
• Likelihood Thought-Action Fusion. "Talking about it makes it happen".
• The Ostrich Effect. "Bury your head in the sand and the bad thing will go away".
• Risk Denial. "Don't document it otherwise it affects staff morale and upsets stakeholders and then it will happen".
• Minimisation. "That's not a real risk".
• Normalcy Bias. "It's never happened before".
• Optimism Bias. "That wouldn't happen here".
• Risk Discounting. "It wouldn't be that bad".
• Disaster Myopia. "Nothing like that has happened for years".
• Denial Culture. "Keep calm and shut the **** up".
• Defensive Denial. "Are you saying my plan is flawed?"
• False Positivity. "Don't be so negative. It might never happen."
• Blame the Messenger.
• Punitive Delegation. "You saw it, you fix it."
• Slopey-shoulders. "Bring me solutions, not problems".
• Safe Inaction. "Let sleeping dogs lie".
• Career-minded Inaction. "You don't get sacked for making no decision".
• Omission Bias. "If I ignore it and it blows up, bad luck. If I poke it and it blows up, I'll get the blame."
• Benign Neglect. "It's not broken enough to be worth fixing".
• Strategic Inaction. "I have decided it should wait".
• Wilful Ignorance. "La, la, la, can't hear you. Oops, dropped it in the bin."
• Organisational Inertia. "We don't do it that way here".
• Kick it Down the Road. "I'll move on before it happens".
• Science Will Fix It. "Not a problem. Science will find a solution."
• Groupthink. "There's only you thinks that so you're wrong".
• The Abilene Paradox. "It looks like everyone else thinks this isn't a problem so I'll keep quiet".
• Bystander Effect. "Surely everyone can see this, so someone must be dealing with it".
• Pluralistic Ignorance. "Everyone else is cheering the Emperor's new suit. It must be me that's mistaken."
• Weaponised Competence. "If you can't see how this works, you aren't thinking strategically".
• The Newcomer. "When you've been here a while, you'll understand".
• Unstoppable Project Momentum. "We've gone too far to stop now".
• Traffic Light Quota. "We already have our limit for red risks on the dashboard".
• Goodhart's Law. "The SLA says we can't have any more risks".
• Organisational Inertia. "We can't change how we do things, it's like turning a super-tanker".
• Cassandra Syndrome. "Oh, is he complaining about that thing AGAIN? He's always complaining about it. Ignore him."
• The Law of Triviality. "We'll worry about that huge thing another day. First we need to count the paperclips."
• The Crocodile Nearest the Boat. "Don't worry about that huge problem that's downstream. There's a little problem right here."
• Bum-covering. "It's OK, I already alluded to that on page 156 in Appendix D."
• Panic Avoidance Bias. "Don't mention that; it'll set the hares running and create more work."
• I Hear What You Say. "I'm not interested. Shut up and go away."
• The Chilling Effect. "Stop looking to cause trouble. It is disruptive and not appreciated."
• Cascade Anxiety. "Don't go opening that can of worms, it'll just create more problems."
• Pandora's Box Effect. "If we go down that path, it opens up too much complexity for us to handle."
• Strategic Misrepresentation. "If we document that risk, we might lose the funding."
• Action Bias. "Stop thinking about what might go wrong and just get on with it".
• Scope Insulated Execution. "We need to protect the scope and not get tied up hypothesising legal implications".
• Budget Protection. "We haven't the money to do anything about that anyway".
• Analysis Paralysis Pre-emption. "Don't go down that rabbit hole and get us bogged down in what-ifs. Let's move on".
• Career Warning. "You need to think about your audience before making statements like that."
• Semantic Evasion. "It's not a risk because we know it will happen, but it is not an issue because it has not happened yet."
• Administrative Friction. "The risk system is too hard to use."
• Hierarchy Deflection. "That's a corporate risk, not a project risk."
• Audit Magnet. "Don't put that down. Audit & Assurance will want a mitigation plan and we can't afford the mitigation."
• Political Timing. "Don't record that yet, it's not a good time."
• Technical Debt. "Don't call it a risk or we might get sacked. Call it Technical Debt so we get extended to fix it."
• Scope Creepiness. "Irrelevant. Fixing that is not in our scope."
• Hero Creation. "Don't record it. Let's fix it, then tell them we found it and fixed it."
• Deferential Delay. "The SRO is about to retire. Don't raise that showstopper until after the leaving do."
• Corporate Gag. "The lawyers and PR said the cause never happened, so we mustn't record the risks it created."
• NDA Blindfold. "We're not allowed to talk about that matter and I'm not even supposed to tell you we can't."
• Political Expediency. "That would need a mitigation action and we could be accused of knowing it would go wrong all along."
• Negotiational Expediency. "Don't bring that up until we've finished negotiating the contract."
• Zero Risk Bias. "The Board has a zero tolerance of risk."
• Atychiphobic Governance. "If I admit there's a risk, it means confessing I've failed as a manager."
• The Immaculate Delivery Myth. "The Seniors brought you in to run this project properly and that means no risks. Understand?"

Reasons to Raise Risks

• Come to think of it, I'm not sure there are any now.