From the Desk of Gordon Phillips, Chief Risk Officer (CRO)
Everyone has to do something for a living.
Me, I manage risk.
And what a job it is because risk is quite literally everywhere.
Don’t believe me?
People have been known to drop their hair dryer into the bathtub and electrocute themselves.
Or to take a “selfie” at the edge of a cliff… and step right off.
See what I mean?
Risk is everywhere — and I do mean everywhere!
Cut an apple in half and notice how thin the red outer skin is compared to the diameter of the apple.
Amazingly, the biosphere in which we humans can survive when compared to the size of our entire planet is just about as thin.
And all the while we’re whizzing at 66,000 miles per hour around our central star.
A star that is slowly dying.
That all sounds pretty risky to me!
And you never know where risk will come from next.
Case in point: at approximately 1:00PM Eastern time on Tuesday, November 30, 1954, an iron meteorite the size of a grapefruit crashed through the roof of Ann Hodges’ house in Oak Grove, Alabama, bounced off of a radio, and hit her in the thigh.
That meteorite had been traveling at speeds many times faster than a rifle bullet for eons, from a time when our solar system itself was created.
And all that time, it had Ann’s name on it.
All Ann had to do was get up and go to the refrigerator for a snack!
Instead she took a nap in her living room chair, in the direct path of that meteorite, and the rest is history (actually, Ann was only injured and survived the mishap).
Which leads me to the categorization of risks.
There are risks we are aware of, and risks we cannot know in advance.
Risks which we can anticipate can be avoided.
My job is to anticipate both business risk and market risk.
And do what?
Why, avoid them, of course.
But some risks cannot be anticipated.
Like Anne and her meteorite.
After all, how can you know what you don’t know if you don’t know that you don’t know it?
Sure, it’s a dirty job managing risk, but somebody’s gotta’ do it.
Exactly how will be the subject of our next post.
But I’d better stop writing now or I’ll risk being late for dinner.