Stakeholder Involvement: Communicating risk without risk communication - Video 1
Transcript:
Your divisions really bleep me out because you divided them between academia, practicals and so on. I am a little bit of everything, I am in the academia but I love my practical world as a matter of fact is the only way I have a horse and a swimming pool in my summer house. Therefore, I don't distinguish between my academia and my practical world and when the cement company or other company give me money to do my research I don't even think about European funding.
Now, what I'm gonna share with you guys is in some sort of a risk communication. It's very complicated because when we talk about risk communication all of you create ideas about your own interests and you define your own risk communication. Then, risk communication without risk communication is basically a blowout shock but one important thing that I want after the conclusions that you draw from your old discussions. This is very interesting, that is, we have to involve, we have to discuss, we have to make people, make them discuss and to get interest.
First of all, what I'm working on? I'm basically I work also in security inside the companies but basically I am the guide that they ask when the community is on fire. You remember? My roof is on fire, exactly, when, for instance when the cement company wants to use waste as foul (1:50) and they have a huge amount of problems with the community. When someone wants to construct hazardous of waste treatment site. Hospital, I have worked on hospital waste for the last 20 years. I have worked on hazardous waste for the last 20 years, and so on when people really get mad with each other because they don't agree on doing something and they asked me, ok. Therefore, that's mi kind of risk communication although I also worked inside organizations, in security and risk management, but what I am talking about today is more about this confrontation of styles.
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The Value of Stakeholder Involvement - Video 2
Transcript
The value of stakeholder involvement. Successful projects start with a clearly defined mission statement, well-focused project plan and are executed with stakeholder involvement. Who are stakeholders? Stakeholders on a project could be the staff, the administration, the clients, those funding the project, peers, family, the community as a whole. At the UN (United Nations) we think of stakeholders in terms of three entities: member states, United Nations organizations and major groups. Major groups would consist of civil society. How do we engage stakeholders? We involve them in the process from the beginning, the middle, the end when a project is rolled out. We can think of projects and process in a couple of different ways. If we start thinking along the software development lines or process development system design, we think of two processes: one is the waterfall process, it was a process that you would use if you were in the automotive industry and you wanted to design the hydraulics for you are convertible, each layer of electronics or hydraulics that combined together worked on the previous design on development, if you change one piece in any of the layers of the system you have to start over from the begining. When you were finished with a waterfall project, through the process, everything was complete, it was done, it was expensive to develop but it worked and you move forward. It was not easy to change.
Today we speak in terms of agile, the agile approach in the development, the agile method. It is build on iterations. You get together with your stakeholders, you come up with a plan, you set some milestones and you have short intervals of iterations where you go and build what is set for that period and then you come back and revisit and see how things are working before you move forward. The stakeholder involvement is very essential at every step of the way. You get feedback to make sure things are working as you had hoped or perhaps the hopes and desires change as you move along. There's actually an agile manifesto which states the importance of face-to-face communications and the way you work in a group and also the way you work with your stakeholders and if not face-to-face, it would be through video conference, it's esential that you are speaking with the key players.
Stakeholder involvement is based on the belief that expertise does not solely lie with the program professionals. Stakeholders and persons or organizations have investments in the content of the program. If you don't bring in your stakeholders you could be building with a bubble. Designing for it yourself instead of your clients, you need their feedback. A couple of examples come to mind. After the world conference on sustainable development in Johannesburg in 2002 a partnership database was built for that time this was state of the art. Organizations came together and formed partnerships with the United Nations or partnerships with themselves, its recognized partnerships at the ability to raise funds and it was important to have this seal as a United Nations partnertship. Data was put into this website that was displayed as information, however, this was pre web 2.0. There was very little interactivity and there was not user-generated content aside from what content was initially put into the system, it was difficult to add more information and it was a cumbersome project that wound up having no visitors. The site partnership data bases being doormant for years and it is a sad testament to the lack of stakeholder involvement.
In the late 19s there was another website that was built as a knowledge platform for a while it served the small island developing states known as SIDS and the name of site was Citizen; however, the citizen did not have stakeholder buying, without stakeholders participating the site actually wound up being dormant, people were not visiting it because people it was not being updated, and it did not have any user-genegerated content. In 2010, the department of of Economic Social Affairs had a project to revitalize the SIDS net, a knowledge platform for the SIDS or small on developing states. It is an important tool to be used by stakeholders. Unfourtunateky, this time again when they planned for building this site stakeholder involvement was either not taking into account to the depth that it needed to be or there was an unwillingness to participate whatever the case may be this site was built. Two years later, after thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours, the site is once again visited infrequently with little or not stakeholder buying.
This is a terrible mistake. Now, with today's technology and we can think Gordon Moore for his courtlaw, the ability for computers and the capacity has doubled every 18 to 24 months which was what he stated in 1965, that is important to us because technology is changing in a dramatic rate. If you think of the speed and power of computers to doubling every 18 to 24 months that is why everything we have is obsolete, we are onto the new latest and greatest thing. The web is fatser, the computers are faster, with a more RAM, more process in speed, we can do more with less, we can reach people from around the world , the world is becoming flat. So, what does it mean for technology? Literally, if you do not involve your stakeholders when you are developing a project, your project could very well be outdated by the time you launch it and in the course of the year you could easily miss technologies that have came to fruition that were not available six months prior. So, staying with your stakeholders, involving them in every step of the way, that includes initial thought process, planning, testing, roll out and then feedback, moving forward, it is essential to any project that you work in.
In real, this June we had a conference called "the United Nations conference or sustainable development" known as Rio plus 20. We organized the partnership form. Again we talked about the partnership database that had gone dormant, however, there has been an increased awareness of the value of partnerships. So, together with stakeholders, the idea of this forum came to be, it was planned beginning in December that we would have a form at the real event, we would have high-level participation, we brought in leaders from around the world from the sustainable development field, five sessions to organize, prior to this forum, we brought together several of the key players at meetings at the United Nations and some of our colleagues travel to their offices to set up the program that they wanted, that this sessions would be meaningful, people would be in Río for this event and these stakeholders could get together and devote some time to outcome that they wanted. At this event, the five sessions did in fact have some desired outcomes and those outcomes were based on what these stakeholders wanted. We had an inkling from meetings prior to the event, we had been in discussion with them and by the time we got to real, we knew that there was interest in a new platform, a new knowledge platform. It was not a job to build it for them but we knew they did not want to build it, however if they wanted us to put our resources together and they were to support it, we would come up with a new platform with the use of generated content offering 2.0 features, the interactivity that they wanted only if they provide the stakeholder involvement, meaning they would act as the focal points to generate the information needed to keep this sustained effort moving forward. Without the stakeholder involvement this new knowledge platform will say the partnership form if it comes to fruition would be like the citizen in the former partnership database. The lesson learned here is that if you work together with your partners from the beginning thrugh the process and follow up with them once the process is deliver and developed, you continue to take your feedback and move forward, these different iterations will be the actual project or process that they wanted in a successful project that is meaning and will provide the future that your stakeholders wanted.
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7 What is the difference between risk and uncertainty? - Video 3
Transcript
A: Well, David good moornig
B: Good morning Celine
A: Now, let us take the two sides of risk of course. We would like to know what is the difference between risk and uncertainty and are these the same or different?
B: Yes, you might think it is just a question of language that we have a lot of words and some of the words just mean the same thing and is risk the same as uncertainty? The answer is no, they are not the same. All risks are uncertain but not all uncertainties are risks. So how many uncertainties are there in the world do you think? or there are billions? I mean, we do not get to do it. If you have a project and you want to write down a risk register, do you have billions of things in your risk register?
A: No
B: Of course not. So, we filter these billions of uncertainties that are out there, there are sorts of things that may happen that we have no idea about and somehow we reduce it, somehow we filter it to say, here are 20 or 50 or a hundred risks. So, what is the filter that we would use to say there are billions of words we don't know how many uncertainties. These are the ones that we got to write down in a risk register. We have to have some kind of filter, some kind of subset, which ones do we need to record, think about, manage and review monitor and the distinction is very simple I think.
A: Which is?
B: That's what you want to know, isn't it?
A: Yes
B: If you go back into the history, some people distinguish between these things mathematically, Frank Knight, there's 90 and uncertainty and 90 and risk which you will be familiar with. Some people distinguish philosophically, some people distinguish linguistically I have a very very simple filter. We talked in the ISO 31000 standard about a five word definition of risk, the effect of uncertainty on objectives. I have a three word definitions of risk which is even simpler than the ISO definition, it's this: "Risk is uncertainty that matters" because most of the billions of uncertainties in the world don't matter. So, is it going to rain in London this afternoon, it might, it might not. Do you care? Does it matter? No, it doesn't matter to me at all, it's irrelevant, it's an uncertainty but it's not a risk, I don't have to think about it, I do not have to write it down and try and manage it. I have a daugther who lives in London. She has a baby who she wants to take to the nursery this morning. If it's going to rain in London this afternoon she needs to take a coat for the baby, she needs to take an umbrella for herself, she needs to think about it.
A: That matters to her
B: It's for her an uncertainty that matters, for me an uncertainty that doesn't matter. So what we need to do when we are trying to identify risks is to find the uncertainties that matter. Now, here is the question: what matters? How do you know what matters? And here we find the link to objectives. We talked earlier of it in this course.
A: Of course.
B: The risk is always and only linked to objectives. With no objectives we have no risks. The objectives are what is at risk. The objectives are what matters. We are here to deliver objectives whether they are project objectives, portfolio objectives, corporate objectives, national objectives, social objectives, personal objectives. There's something that we are trying to achieve and what we are looking for is the uncertainties that could affect those. So, behind the definition in the ISO 31000 standard, risk is the effect of uncertainty on objectives. It's this simple idea that risk is uncertainty that matters and from this, there are simply three words we have two halves of the risk: all risks are uncertain yes, but all risks matter. And so what we need to do when we are thinking about what goes in the risk register. Everything in the risk register must be uncertain. If it's not uncertain, it's not a risk but also everything must matter by being tied to objectives. If it doesn't affect one of my objectives I don't care, I don't need to think about it, it's not a risk to me, but what is not a risk to me might be a risk to you and so because we might have different objectives and so what we have to do is always think about what my obejctives are. If I identify a risk in my project which doesn't affect my objectives maybe it affects somebody else's objectives, maybe I need to pass that risk on to you and say, "I found this, it's not mine because it doesn't affect my objectives, but I think it can be yours because it affects your objectives" and as we talked earlier on about organizations being a hierarchy of objectives. Different things matter at different levels and so what we have to do is understand that different things matter at different levels of risk. And then we think about something that matters to me doesn't matter to you, it could be the other way around. I find a risk which could affect one of my subcontractors, it matters to them, it doesn't matter to me. Something that affects my customer might not matter to me. So, all of these things are related to things like risk ownership which we will talk about later on, but if you want to remember a really really simple definition of risk "uncertainty that matters", just three words, that's the simplest definition I know.
A: Let me try to understand more. If that means from what you have said, if that means that uncertainty is an event where you don't know the consequences, you don't know the probabilities and likelihood and cannot be treated with statistics for example. However, the risk, you know the consequences, you know the likelihood and even probability of that risk will happen, is that correct?
B: Well, that's what Frank Knight came up with the night E and uncertainty, the difference between being able to measure and not being able to measure. Well, I think I disagree because uncertainty or risk are not just events. Risk is any uncertainty that matters and if we go back then to the ISO 31000 definition, the effect of uncertainty on objectives and I mentioned that the ISO 31000 standard has principles, 11 principles. One of the principles is that risk management addresses all types of uncertainties not just events. So there's lack of knowledge. If I don't know something it creates uncertainty. There is variation if I'm going to do something but I'm not sure how long it will take, then it's not that there's an issue around the probability, I know I'm going to do it and it's not impact, it's just I don´t know how long it will take. So, there are different types of uncertainties, but any uncertainty that matters, is something I need to think about, is something I need to prepare for and try to manage.
A: David, is this the uncertainty we are talking about most of scientits use, scientifically, most scientists they talk about uncertainty. Is that the one we are talking about or something different?
B: It is that. So, scientific uncertainty it's also psychological uncertainty, social uncertainty, relational uncertainty, any uncertainty that matters, but certainly that includes the uncertainty that people would describe in a scientific realm.
A: Excellent! Thank you David. I appreciate it.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=008B9NZ2hVY
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