Overview
Operational risks are typically assessed using qualitative scales such as High, Medium and Low. While the use of such scales enables an organisation to prioritise the risks, the outcomes of risk assessments cannot be utilised for business decision making as business decisions are typically made on quantitative performance measures such revenue, cost, profitability and return on investment. In this webinar, Carl Spetzler and Warwick Blyth shared benefits and methods for quantifying operational risks to enable organisations to utilise operational risk assessment outcomes for business decision making.
As Decision Consultants Carl Spetzler and Warwick Blyth have, for decades, been helping their diverse clients to make complex decisions in the face of risk and uncertainty. A key element of this work is understanding when and how to quantify uncertainty. In this webinar they shared some of their insights and approaches to practical measurement of uncertainty and how this can be used to prioritise risks and make business decisions. They also touched on related questions of why you need to quantify risk and how to decide when a risk needs to be quantified. This should be a valuable discussion for those faced with identifying and managing operational risks as part of strategic and operational business decisions.
About the speakers
Carl Spetzler
- Dr. Carl Spetzler co-founded Strategic Decisions Group in 1981 and currently serves as chairman and CEO. He is a leader in strategy and innovation processes, helping corporate leaders cope with the lack of explicit strategic alternatives, deal with the complexities of uncertainty and risk over long time horizons, and achieve lasting change. Over the past three decades, Dr. Spetzler has worked with top management and boards of directors to improve the quality of decisions and decision-making processes in many diverse organizations, such as capital-intensive companies, financial institutions, high-technology manufacturers, and systems businesses. His guidance has led to innovative results such as developing revolutionary new products, redirecting and restructuring major corporations, and creating strategic alliances. In 2008, Dr. Spetzler was named one of the 100 most influential people in finance in by Treasury & Risk for his work in enterprise risk management.
- In collaboration with leading university partners in the field of applied decision science, Dr. Spetzler oversees the Strategic Decision and Risk Management certificate program, a high quality decision-making professional educational program for leaders around the world. He is a Life Trustee of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chairman of the Decision Education Foundation, and a past the recipient of the Ramsey Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS.
- Dr. Spetzler has as BS (Chemical Engineering), MBA and PhD from Illinois Institute of Technology. He is the lead author of the 2016 book Decision Quality: Value Creation from Better Business Decisions with Hannah Winter and Jennifer Meyer (Wiley, 2016).
Warwick Blyth
- Warwick Blyth co-leads SDG Energy Practice and is a core member of SDG’s Enterprise Risk Management practice team. Since first joining Strategic Decisions Group in 1994 he has worked in many parts of the world and advised clients in a wide variety of industries. His efforts have helped businesses develop novel strategies, improve their decision processes, make major investments, identify new markets, establish new business lines and obtain financing . From 2001-2009 he was a partner at PSP Icon, a Cape Town-based consulting firm where he led its Strategy and Decisions practice. He was then CEO of the South African Oil and Gas Alliance, a public/private sector agency focused on developing the oil and gas services sector in Southern Africa. In this role he was instrumental in developing a national industrial policy for the upstream oil & gas services sector, establishing a special economic zone and increasing foreign investment into the local sector. He has an MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University and received a BSc (Honours) (First Class) with distinction in computer science and mathematics from the University of Cape Town. He is a member of the Society of Decision Professionals and lectures occasionally at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. He is also an investor and board member of TeachMe2, an internet start-up focused on the education sector.
About the host
This session was hosted by Manoj Kulwal. He is passionate about utilising risk management as a business management tool for designing effective business strategy and successfully implementing the selected strategy. He has been involved in development of the international risk management standard ‘ISO 31000’ and in development of ‘Certificate of Operational Risk Management’ offered by The Institute of Operational Risk. He has trained more than 1,000+ operational risk management practitioners from financial services firms globally over the last 5 years. He is currently the Co-Founder and Chief Risk Officer at RiskSpotlight. At RiskSpotlight, he leads the team that developed the world’s first forward-looking operational risk news service – RiskSpotlight Portal.
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