I like reading the Eight to Late Blog. It's at my "As Read At" list, I walk through almost daily.
The latest post is about The Risk - a dialogue mapping vignette - about a workshop on the theme of collaborative problem solving using dialogue mapping as tool with a special notion: Issue Based Information System.
Risk or danger?
It's insightful to see how the tool helped creating the map by team discussions evolutionary...but there's one thing: "Schedule is too tight" is not a risk, but a danger. How I turn it around, I do not find a realistic opportunity in it.
Optimal risk revisited
"Build a technology stack to master tight schedules of future projects..." is a risky project. If you run out of financial capabilities before anything applicable is done it kills…But if it's done it creates a lot of opportunities: do things you couldn't do without, applying it in fields you haven't thought about before, more flexible licensing, pricing and return valuing…and options: minimum viable releases for minimum viable usages for minimum viable clients…in an evolutionary development approach.
Risk is a subject of common misconceptions. Remember, managing risk means arranging things that make opportunities and danger a positive contribution. If things are quantifiable, you may be able to optimize it.
Cutting off opportunities from "risk" creates fear
The workshop was a great explorative learning experience…I've no doubt. What I want to point out: the deep understanding of the principle factors influence the mapping of the conversation about them.
The philosophical background of this is that things "change" in discussions if their weave of formal representation and content change. If risk is bad becomes the common sense (a formal "law"), we stop innovating.
It's done before? It's too early? If we do it, it may be the last time? What will the market say?…are all fruit of risk aversion fed by mistaking risk and danger (loss).
