Ruth and I visited a range of venues for our Facilitating Risk Management workshop on 21-22nd March a few days ago. Although it was a cold day, the inside of this almost brand new hotel was warm and inviting. We’re delighted to have found such a stunning building for our first Facilitating Risk workshop of 2012. It’s the Radisson Blu hotel close to East Midlands Airport, so it’s very handy for anyone flying in from other European cities. For those who prefer trains, East Midlands Parkway has fast trains to London. The M1 motorway is close by too.

We already have sold many of the places, so please book your place quickly if you would like to come. We’re keeping the numbers low, with a maximum of eight participant per facilitator.

Ruth and I are having fun pulling together the details of the programme for those who come. Programme? Yes, this isn’t just a workshop. The whole group will be supporting you afterwards as you apply what you have learnt back in the workplace. There will be some things to think through beforehand and bring with you, so that we can root our work in your own challenges. We will be holding a teleseminar before the course to give you some background about the case study we’ll use and to answer any of your questions.

Our early bird offer lasts until 21st February. Pay in full by 21st February to receive £100 reduction in the price to £795 + VAT. To cinfirm your place, you can book online or request an invoice to your company.

You can find out much more and book here.

Penny was in Oxford on 1st December, presenting on ‘Making Risk Management Work’ to a large group of project managers. The group included risk managers from a huge range of industries, including defence, mining, power generation, mobile telephony, local government and more. We even had some post-graduates from Warwick University, researching into different aspects of risk.

We looked at various ways to bring the human aspects into risk management, focusing mainly on facilitating risk workshops. We had a wide ranging discussion, from agreeing the purpose of the evening through to how to work with ‘face’ in Asia to identify risks. You can see the outputs here, including the pitfalls people face with risk management and what works with risk workshops.

We enjoyed some Green and Black’s organic chocolate too, apart from the one person who prefered a sweet. (Thank you for your lovely illustration of how people differ!)

Please comment below if you’d like to continue the discussion.

• Pick up Penny Pullan's book on Facilitating Risk Management for half-price (under £9!) at the Gower stall #PMIukSynergy #

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Ruth and I seem to be travelling a lot at the moment. I’m in Dubai this week and Ruth was in Nigeria not long ago.

However, travelling isn’t stopping us preparing for our book launch which starts next week. It’s a virtual Summit, focused on Making Risk Work. You can register for free here.

What exactly is a virtual summit anyway? You take part by opening a web page each day at a time to suit you. Each day, you’ll have a different session to listen to and you can respond and ask questions in a LinkedIn group we’ve created.

The speakers are Ruth on Monday 11th July, me on Tuesday 12th, David Hillson (who wrote the foreword) on Wednesday 13th, Anna and Maya on Thursday 14th and Jonathan Norman, our publisher, on Friday 15th.

The sessions are short and fun and packed with useful hints and tips. If you buy, or have bought the book, you’ll receive all the files to keep.

Hope you can join in!

In the meanwhile, I’m off to try out some local pastimes. Penny

• Amazon are now shipping our book in the UK despite saying 'on pre order'. See more http://www.amzn.to/mr8Qml #

To help people understand more about our work on facilitating risk management, we’re organising a virtual risk summit that will happen in w/c 11th July 2011.

We are currently building a special website to explain all about it, and you’ll be able to sign-up (for free) AND get 35% off the price of our book (making it less than £12) AND get the option to listen again to the summit as you wish.

It was great this week to prepare the first two sessions for the summit.  Penny interviewing me about why risk management NEEDS people with facilitation skills, and me interviewing Penny to understand more about what facilitation is and how it helps.  We will be interviewing other practitioners for later sessions – watch this space for more information very soon.

I wanted to share with you the experience of a major pharma company and the way they have embraced risk management as a ‘way of life’ is their organisation.  Sounds like a distant dream I bet to some of you reading this – but in fact they made it look quite easy.  The logic is compelling once leaders get it – it’s just that so many leaders don’t.

The organisation in question was determined that to gain benefits from risk management that it must be integrated into the business – so explicitly linked to decision-making and with (wait for it) – NO NEW MEETINGS – or anything else masquerading as a meeting such as a risk workshop.   Instead existing meetings were used to do the risk-associated business alongside the other agenda items.

They found then, that facilitators (who were risk experts, but didn’t have a risk title) were invaluable in coordinating the efforts of multiple line managers who were all leading risk-based interventions, and producing and using risk-based information in their part of the business.  Facilitators were used to coach and support line managers, and to ensure that learning spread across the organisation and was consolidated into processes and tools.

So – a challenging thought may be – how do you facilitate risk management: engaging others to identify, own and manage risk – without creating a whole new industry of meetings and workshops where risk is done.  How can you work to help your organisation embed risk as a way of life?

We are interested in your experiences and thoughts – please do share them with Penny and me.

Ruth

In the run up to the book launch, we’re going to feature great quotes from some people we interviewed as part of our preparation.

Here’s a good one to start with:

“We’re often so busy that risk management can be overlooked as we concentrate on day to day delivery”, says Atul, who manages risk on big financial programmes and facilitates risk management workshops for others. How does he get around this? “I make sure that I allocate enough time for risk right from the start in my plans. I tackle risk in a very pragmatic way, but I always make sure that my steering committees are fully aware of the risk picture.”

Thank you Atul, and all the best for your own risk management. Hope you enjoy the book!