Quotes & Sayings About Risk Management

The situation - having to choose between imposing higher retail prices and reducing investments and military spending - created a dilemma for the government: deciding between conflict with the public or with the Party economic elite. But not making a decision heightened the risk that, as the crisis developed, there would be conflict with both the public and the elite.18 The new generation of leaders clearly did not understand this. The traditional management of the economy was oriented on natural, rather than abstract, parameters. The development of cattle breeding was discussed at the highest level more frequently than the country's budget. Industry and business leaders regarded finances as necessary but dreary bookkeeping.19 In addition, information on the real state of the budget, hard currency reserves, foreign debt, and balance of payments was available only to an extremely narrow circle of people, many of whom understood nothing about it anyway. — Yegor Gaidar

Let me simplify my take on intervention. To me it is mostly about having a systematic protocol to determine when to intervene and when to leave systems alone. And we may need to intervene to control the iatrogenics of modernity - particularly the large-scale harm to the environment and the concentration of potential (though not yet manifested) damage, the kind of thing we only notice when it is too late. The ideas advanced here are not political, but risk-management based. I do not have a political affiliation or allegiance to a specific party; rather, I am introducing the idea of harm and fragility into the vocabulary so we can formulate appropriate policies to ensure we don't end up blowing up the planet and ourselves. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

relationships between debtors and creditors brokered or 'intermediated' by increasingly numerous institutions called banks. The core function of these institutions was now information gathering and risk management. — Niall Ferguson

Risk managers and investment bankers and actually, all kinds of investors took on more risk than they expected. So there was a failure of risk management. There was a failure to recognize how much risk there was in some of these securities that people bought. — Robert F. Engle

We live in a blatantly corrupt world and smart people engage in the wise practice of risk management. — Steven Magee

A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future. — Peter Drucker

Businesses can be opaque. They are complex. You don't know how aircraft engines work either. — Jamie Dimon

We are pioneers and the history of pioneers is not that good. — Jeff Bezos

The law of governance, risk-management, and compliance is the body of rules, regulations, and best practices that, individually and collectively, are intended to ensure that organizations are managed effectively and in such a way as to enhance social welfare. — Geoffrey P. Miller

If we face recession, we should not lay off employees; the company should sacrifice a profit. It's management's risk and management's responsibility. Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer? — Akio Morita

If you've been in the software business for any time at all, you
know that there are certain common problems that plague one
project after another. Missed schedules and creeping requirements
are not things that just happen to you once and then go
away, never to appear again. Rather, they are part of the territory.
We all know that. What's odd is that we don't plan our projects
as if we knew it. Instead, we plan as if our past problems are
locked in the past and will never rear their ugly heads again. Of
course, you know that isn't a reasonable expectation. — Tom DeMarco

It's better to solve the right problem approximately than to solve the wrong problem exactly. — John Tukey

If you don't invest in risk management, it doesn't matter what business you're in, it's a risky business. — Gary Cohn

Never take both hands off the pump. As an entrepreneur, you need to be on constant lookout for opportunity, and that will involve risk. But you minimize those risks by keeping one hand on the pump that is producing for you. — Kenneth E. Behring

Outperforming the market with low volatility on a consistent basis is an impossibility. I outperformed the market for 30-odd years, but not with low volatility. — George Soros

All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination. — Walter Wriston

Boundaries and risk management are very important parts of living a healthy and positive life. — Bryant McGill

For individuals and organizations alike, a reputation is far easier to destroy than it is to build. — Andrew Griffin

I don't see what the alternative to risk management is. If it's just getting rid of the models and instead using the smart people who can figure it out? How do you train them? What do you teach them? Do you just put them in a cockpit and let them stumble for 10 years of their life and then after that they're good at it? — Robert F. Engle

Risk is just an expensive substitute for information. — Adrian Slywotzky

most important distinction in the investment world does not separate individuals and institutions; the most important distinction divides those investors with the ability to make high quality active management decisions from those investors without active management expertise. Few institutions and even fewer individuals exhibit the ability and commit the resources to produce risk-adjusted excess returns. — David F. Swensen

People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. — Peter F. Drucker

Changes made by management today make no improvement. — Peter R. Scholtes

All persons entering a heart do so at their own risk. Management can and will be held responsible for any loss, love, theft, ambition or personal injury. Please take care of your belongings. Please take care of the way you look at me. No roller skating, kissing, smoking, fingers through hair, 3 am phone calls, stained letters, littering, unfeeling feelings, a smell left on a pillow, doors slammed, lyrics whispered, or loitering. Thank you. — Pleasefindthis

I can assure you, as long as I'm here, as long as my colleagues are here, we do know about risks. — Oswald Grubel

Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: "We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior." They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, "to achieve sufficient profit." This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently. — Russell L. Ackoff

1. Project What is the project? Why is it unique? Why is the business needed? Why will customers love your product? 2. Partners Who are you? Who are the partners? What are your educational backgrounds? How much experience do you all have? How are you and your partners qualified to make the project a success? 3. Financing What is the total cost of the project? How much debt and how much equity is there? Are partners investing their own money? What is the investor's return and reward for their risk? What are the tax consequences? Who is your CFO or accounting firm? Who is responsible for investor communications? What is the investor's exit? 4. Management Who is running your company? What is their experience? What is their track record? Have they ever failed? How does their experience relate to your industry? Do you believe this is the strongest management team you can assemble? Can you pitch them with confidence? — Donald J. Trump

Those who see what's obvious aren't necessarily brighter than others. They're just more likely to observe that the emperor is naked. Like children, they see what's actually there. Their perceptions are less clouded by belief systems, taboos, habits of thought. One responsibility of management
an important one
is to call attention to the invisible obvious, pointing it out as a child does (sometimes to the embarrassment of adults). Doing so also requires supporting employees who take that risk, too, and other risks as well. — Richard Farson

In financial services, if you want to be the best in the industry, you first have to be the best in risk management and credit quality. It's the foundation for every other measure of success. There's almost no room for error. — John G. Stumpf

I'd decided to take the risk, and either I'd succeed or else. — Yanni

Younger managers learn quickly that, whatever the public protestations to the contrary, bosses generally want pliable and agreeable subordinates, especially during periods of crisis. Clique leaders want dependable, loyal allies. Thos who regularly raise objections to what a boss or a clique leader really desires run the risk of being considered problems themselves and of being labeled "outspoken," or "nonconstructive," or "doomsayers," "naysayers," or "crepehangers. — Robert Jackall

Management guru Jim Collins has some good words here. He and Morten T. Hansen studied leadership in turbulent times. They looked at more than twenty thousand companies, sifting through data in search of an answer to this question: Why in uncertain times do some companies thrive while others do not? They concluded, "[Successful leaders] are not more creative. They're not more visionary. They're not more charismatic. They're not more ambitious. They're not more blessed by luck. They're not more risk-seeking. They're not more heroic. And they're not more prone to making big, bold moves." Then what sets them apart? "They all led their teams with a surprising method of self-control in an out-of-control world."2 — Max Lucado

I have learned that nothing is certain except for the need to have strong risk management, a lot of cash, the willingness to invest even when the future is unclear, and great people. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Genuinely intelligence-led operations have to be embedded into both processes and more importantly mindsets to bridge the gaps in Risk Management. — Pearl Zhu

You cannot manage risk, or for that matter, build a risk management capability without first understanding the "business value of risk management. — Pearl Zhu

The key to risk management is never putting yourself in a position where you cannot live to fight another day. — Richard S. Fuld Jr.

My career in academic research has not been involved with active management of securities. I've tried to understand risk-and-return relationships; also the pricing of derivative securities. — Myron Scholes

Stock prices relative to company assets are no better at signaling the likelihood of future earnings growth than they were the day the Titanic sank, and risk management is a good deal worse. — Timothy Noah

The easy way out usually leads back in. — Peter Senge

The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome. — Peter L. Bernstein

Maybe we should teach schoolchildren probability theory and investment risk management. — Andrew Lo

Most of the time, your risk management works. With a systemic event such as the recent shocks following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, obviously the risk-management system of any one bank appears, after the fact, to be incomplete. We ended up where banks couldn't liquidate their risk, and the system tended to freeze up. — Myron Scholes

If you spend more than 13 minutes analyzing economic and market forecasts, you've wasted 10 minutes — Peter Lynch

Enron followed the unwise practice of paying bonuses based on forecasted profits, not actual cash flows, a system that posed a problem remarkably similar to the R&D issues Gluck and his colleagues had solved at Northern Electric years earlier. In short: You can forecast anything. Delivering actual results is a different story. The emphasis on forecasts also neutralized Enron's so-called risk-management group, which became a shrinking violet in the face of ever more outrageous estimates. — Duff McDonald

Given the central role of effective, firmwide risk management in maintaining strong financial institutions, it is clear that supervisors must redouble their efforts to help organizations improve their risk-management practices ... We are also considering the need for additional or revised supervisory guidance regarding various aspects of risk management, including further emphasis on the need for an enterprise-wide perspective when assessing risk. — Ben Bernanke

Metaphorically, governance is like a "Steer," Risk Management is like a "Brake. — Pearl Zhu

The technical explanation is that the market-sensitive risk models used by thousands of market participants work on the assumption that each user is the only person using them. — Avinash Persaud

The question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, let alone of belief. The issue is simply one of risk management. — Malcolm Turnbull

I agree with a lot of the points in Taleb's book, but I don't agree with many of his conclusions. It seems to me that he rightly points out that risk managers miss a lot of the risks, but the conclusion is that he draws, is that we should abandon risk management, whereas my conclusion is we should improve it. — Robert F. Engle

Thoughtfully assessing and addressing enterprise risk and placing a high value on corporate transparency can protect the one thing we cannot afford to lose: trust. — Dale E. Jones

The most basic problem is that performance appraisals often don't accurately assess performance. — W. Edwards Deming

THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE PROGRESS IN BUSINESS IS THROUGH CHANGE. AND CHANGE, BY DEFINITION, HAS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF RISK ATTACHED TO IT. BUT IF YOU PICK YOUR SHOTS, USE YOUR HEAD, AND APPLY GOOD MANAGEMENT, THOSE ROLLS OF THE DICE CAN TURN OUT PRETTY — Phil Rosenzweig

Reputation is an outcome; but it is also a valuable, strategic asset. — Andrew Griffin

Time Management Tips: The perpetual processing of the same temptation is both dangerous and time-wasting. Cycling and recycling the same temptation (instead of rejecting such blandishment out of hand) is not only to risk one's soul, again and again, but is to bring on fatigue, so that the Adversary may be able to do indirectly what we will not let him do directly. A lack of decisiveness in dealing with temptation ties up our thought processes and prevents us from doing good with the time allotted to us. — Neal A. Maxwell

Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relations with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first-line attention. In this regard we could learn much from the Japanese. We must reinvest in the human side of management. — William Redington Hewlett

The newly-minted captain is told to let nothing stop him but to do nothing that would risk his ship or his crew. — Patrick O'Brian

A study of project and risk management in software projects in the public sector found that an informal partnership between the project's business owner and the project manager was seen by the latter as providing more effective project proprietorship and governance than the project steering committee [1]. This suggests that the application of governance may be more important than its form. This paper, however, focuses only on formal and explicit governance — Anonymous

Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense — Henry Mintzberg

Risk management seemed to have completed its transformation into pure entertainment. Dudley seemed the epitome of a risk manager who would drown crossing a river that was 12 inches in depth on average. — Satyajit Das

The purpose of risk management is to improve the future, not to explain the past. — Andrew Jaquith

The mistake ... was attributed in part to the fact that employees called the 3-year note 'Losh' and the 5-year note 'Bosh'. The comic mixing of 'Loshes' and 'Boshes' sounded more like a Dr. Seuss children's book than a cutting-edge risk-management operation. — Frank Partnoy

A clear mission statement describes the values and priorities of an organization. Developing a mission statement compels strategists to think about the nature and scope of present operations and to assess the potential attractiveness of future markets and activities. A mission statement broadly charts the future direction of an organization. A mission statement is a constant reminder to its employees of why the organization exists and what the founders envisioned when they put their fame and fortune at risk to breathe life into their dreams. — Fred R. David

Sense and deal with problems in their smallest state, before they grow bigger and become fatal. — Pearl Zhu

People see me as pretty low key in a lot of ways. And for me, like, even choosing to be John Legend and to be who I am as a star, as an artist, it's a risk 'cause I - you know, I graduated from college and worked as a management consultant, and I could have had this very kind of buttoned-up life and worn suits to work every day. — John Legend

I never use hedge funds because I am well aware of what drives future performance, and hedge funds start out with a great disadvantage in every major category: taxes, fees, risk management, transparency and liquidity. — Peter Mallouk

As population susceptibilities are better understood, we will be in a better position than we are in today to make informed decisions about risk management. — Samuel Wilson

We treat employees as a member of the family. If management take the risk of hiring them, we have to take the responsibility for them. — Akio Morita

Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management. — Benjamin Graham

Managing risk is very different from managing strategy. Risk management focuses on the negative-threats and failures rather than opportunities and successes. — Robert S. Kaplan

While we cannot accurately predict the course of climate change in the coming decades, the risks we run if we don't change our course are enormous. Prudent risk management does not equate uncertainty with inaction. — Steven Chu

If you start buying your own bullshit, you risk becoming management material. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

It is far better to do the right thing wrong than to do the wrong thing right. — Russell L. Ackoff

I found the concept of hindsight bias fascinating, and incredibly important to management. One of the toughest problems a CEO faces is convincing managers that they should take on risky projects if the expected gains are high enough. Their managers worry, for good reason, that if the project works out badly, the manager who championed the project will be blamed whether or not the decision was a good one at the time. Hindsight bias greatly exacerbates this problem, because the CEO will wrongly think that whatever was the cause of the failure, it should have been anticipated in advance. And, with the benefit of hindsight, he always knew this project was a poor risk. What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves. — Richard H. Thaler

One of the responsibilities faced by the Environmental Genome Project is to provide the science base upon which society can make better informed risk management decisions. — Samuel Wilson

Love might be a risk, but I'm all about risk-management. — J.A. Huss

Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem. — Russell L. Ackoff

We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world. — Paul Gibbons

Opportunity and risk come in pairs — Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you have an approach that makes money, then money management can make the difference between success and failure ... I try to be conservative in my risk management. I want to make sure I'll be around to play tomorrow. Risk control is essential. — Monroe Trout

There is no doubt that Formula 1 has the best risk management of any sport and any industry in the world. — Jackie Stewart

Risk management is the most important thing to be well understood. Undertrade, undertrade, undertrade is my second piece of advice. Whatever you think your position ought to be, cut it at least in half. — Bruce Kovner

Where's the fun in playing with knives if you can't draw a little blood? — Donald Gorman

Economist Peter Orszag witnessed the workings of vetocracy and its nefarious consequences. Writing in 2011, he reflected on what he had just witnessed as one of the top economic policymakers in the United States: "During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country's political polarization was growing worse - harming Washington's ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. . . . Radical as it sounds we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic. I know that such ideas carry risk. And I have arrived at these proposals reluctantly: they come more from frustration than from inspiration. But we need to confront the fact that a polarized, gridlocked government is doing real harm to our country. And we have to find some way out of it. — Moises Naim

From my perspective, it's really risk management to ensure that humans have the ability to go somewhere else in case there were to be some huge disaster on Earth. — Gwynne Shotwell

The four most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different.' Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again ... The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work. — Martin Wolf

Chemical manufacturers are responsible for reporting any potential problems they discover about these products. This makes Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chemical risk management dependent on information volunteered by industry, and industry has little incentive to look for damning problems or to disclose all it knows. — Nena Baker

Risk models only have value if they are used effectively in combination with a limit management and control process. — Jawwad Farid

Corporate brand, culture, knowledge, and risk management are all boardroom concerns. — Pearl Zhu

Business people need to understand the psychology of risk more than the mathematics of risk. — Paul Gibbons

The nature of risk may be the single most important argument for the use of quantitative analysis in investment management. Neither Investors nor Analysts can be blamed for this fact. Nor can Harry Markowitz. Nature made risk a quadratic function. Markowitz only discovered it. — William Sharpe

I'll keep reducing my trading size as long as I'm losing My money management techniques are extremely conservative. I never risk anything approaching the total amount of money in my account, let alone my total funds. — Randy McKay

This legislation provides Medicaid eligibility to evacuees and residents in (Federal Emergency Management Agency) designated disaster counties, .. It also helps pay private health insurance premiums for those at risk for losing their coverage. — Thad Cochran

I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system responsibility of management 6% special — W. Edwards Deming

Standards should not be forced down from above but rather set by the production workers themselves. — Taiichi Ohno

Risk is a function of how poorly a strategy will perform if the 'wrong' scenario occurs. — Michael Porter

Risk management is a more realistic term than safety. It implies that hazards are ever-present, that they must be identified, analyzed, evaluated and controlled or rationally accepted. — Jerome F. Lederer

The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns. — Benjamin Graham

Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates. — Ben Bernanke

Being able to be repeated controllably
is one key element in risk management. — Toba Beta

Many at the State Department think its their job, not the Army's, to develop cultural and regional expertise and relationships. In such quarters, the RAF concept looks less like an innovative approach to global risk management than yet another military effort to replace diplomats with soldiers. — Rosa Brooks