Managing risks in research
alastairreid.github.io
alastairreid.github.io
That said, I find it important to also consider where risk implies inevitable failure. You need not only manage your risk budget, but also your failure budget. Let me explain:
Risk is a collective concept. Individuals anticipate risk, but see realized success and failure. Collectives see realized rates of success. In that sense, if there is any risk, there is bound to be some failure. Failure is not always negative, it also generates knowledge! This is essential to avoid future risks.
How do we handle this?
- Normalize talking about failure. Document failure.
- Don't stigmatize individuals for bearing risk and failure that is necessary to the organization.
- Create support structures that enable individuals to reason about failure.
- Create visibility so everyone learns from others' failures.
if anyone is interested in reading more on this.
(disclosure: I am the author of that site)
> "Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated.... The essential fact is that 'risk' means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the bearings of the phenomena depending on which of the two is really present and operating.... It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all."