Decision Making / 7 / 7.3

7.3 STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING THE RISK-MANAGEMENT PUZZLE

There a number of things we can do to make our task of assembling the puzzle more effective. These might include:

• Identifying what we can and cannot control in the playing of the game. The game is not directly controllable by any one player: control of the processes of collecting, placing, or removing pieces lies outside the sphere of influence, or domain of action, of any one player.
• Discovering business rules that describe the ways pieces in different parts of the puzzle, or in adjacent areas, are coupled together via the dynamic structure of the puzzle, would be extremely valuable.
• Focusing our search on finding higher value pieces is likely to be a valuable strategy. Initially, at least, we may not fully understand what constitutes a high value piece. We might discover this by experimenting or modelling and simulating the acts of removing or replacing selected pieces to see what effects such action might bring.
• Your guiding influence on the game’s overall strategy might focus on:
• Identifying the other players and their goals in playing the game.
• Building effective ways of communicating with the other players, noting that there is no guarantee that they speak the same language, or even wish to communicate.
• Getting other players to work together with you and with each other to achieve the common goal of building the puzzle. The first step might involve working to build commitments to completing the puzzle, even though such an activity might not initially appear to be in everyone’s interest. This might involve a range of incentives to gain their support and cooperation and ensure this, then, continues.
• Making it clear to other players, who might share similar puzzle-building goals, which areas of the puzzle might produce the best results if they were to work co-operatively.
• Helping other players build their skills in recognising individual pieces, their likely orientation and their possible interfaces with other pieces, through enhanced pattern recognition. That is, making public, by sharing, what has been discovered about the game so far and the business rules so far discovered, that is, a form of action research and action learning.
• Helping others build skills in recognising the significance of collections of assembled pieces, noting that the viewpoint of some players might be more advantageous than that of other players including yours. Again, it would be highly advantageous to make public, to share, what is known through a form of action research /action learning.
• Encouraging friendly players to openly and freely share what they know, in an environment of honesty and mutual cooperation:
• What pieces of the puzzle they hold or have seen. Note here that not all friendly players are fully conversant with the language you speak and the terminology you use.
• Why they believe the pieces they have seen might be relevant to the puzzle under consideration.
• Why they believe certain pieces they have seen do not belong to this particular puzzle, are irrelevant or misleading.
• Ask other players, who may be unfriendly:
• Why their interests or influence are impacted upon by your puzzle-building activities. If possible, the extent to which other players are disaffected should be minimised, if possible.
• What pieces of the puzzle they hold or have seen. Note that these players, whilst speaking your language may choose not to. They might even beat you up (metaphorically, at least) for asking.
• Put in place:
• Processes whereby we might strengthen the alignment of the goals of other players with ours.
• Processes which record where the most important gaps in the puzzle exist.
• Initiatives through which other players become more effective players whilst becoming more closely aligned with our aims. This would involve deliberate and generative learning or training activities directed at making them more effective builders of those parts of the puzzle in which they have a particular interest.

It can be seen from our dynamic puzzle, as we have described it, that playing the game, and working continually to build the picture, rely heavily on recognition and construction skills, taking an holistic view, making most of our combined understanding of systemic structure, and working together. Actively working together, sharing and communicating can be likened to the challenges of creating a learning organisation with a focus on building a culture conducive to effectively facing up to, and managing, risks. This would be the antithesis of a culture of denial described in Section 4.5.