If Risk Equals Cash, What Are Some of the Best Ways to Manage Risk?

By: Stacey Godbold

If Risk Equals Cash, What Are Some of the Best Ways to Manage Risk?

Jim Blair, a recent guest on our Sospes podcast, mentioned it. Specifically, he said: “In America, we intentionally take risks to make money. So we take risks to generate cash. If we don’t manage risk well, [then] we spend cash. [This is] one of the prime themes of my organization’s approach: risk equals cash.”

What I appreciate about Jim’s observation is the acknowledgment that risk is a double-edged sword. Here’s what I mean by that:

If you’re excellent at managing risk, you can make a lot of money.
If you’re lousy at managing risk, you can lose a lot of money.

Jim is the President and CEO of Integrated Risk Management Solutions. His company provides a holistic approach to managing risk across various corporate functions, such as health, safety, environment, business continuity planning, sustainability, security, and more.

In speaking with Jim, I found him to be really enthusiastic about risk (which of course is exactly what you want in a risk management professional!). He’s so gung-ho about evaluating and mitigating risk that some of his clients affectionately refer to him as “the risk nerd.”

Another gem that Jim pointed out during our chat is that risk management, like overall safety, is everybody’s business. It’s a team sport, he said, adding that a risk governance team could consist of employees from human resources, operations, compliance, legal, marketing, IT, and other areas of the organization. Next, Jim shared some of the key activities of such a risk governance team, which would include: