Blog: Rethinking Risk

Focus on Value

At a time when risks seem to be everywhere, and navigating through them can feel overwhelming, Risk Innovation encourages entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurially minded, to focus on value. What is most important to your enterprise and your stakeholders – your investors, customers, and your community? What areas of value do you need to protect in order to make it through the next week, month, quarter, year? And where might you inadvertently and avoidably threaten what’s of value to others?

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen businesses scrambling to protect not only their bottom line in the wake of COVID-19, but also the health and safety of their employees, the brands their customers have come to rely on, and the overall wellbeing of their communities.

We’ve seen local restaurants plotting out spots in their parking lot, 6 feet apart; delivering food and cocktails to each car so that customers could enjoy Sunday brunch or a drive-in movie together, but from a distance. 

We’ve heard stories of retail boutiques packaging kids’ activity sets and arranging for curbside pickup or delivery to local clients.

And we’ve observed cafes putting together cocktail ingredients and pairing them with to-go orders, donating all tips to support employee relief funds.

These stories celebrate  a spirit of innovation in the face of novel risks, and exemplify businesses that recognize and continue to provide value in new and innovative ways. But they also underline the reality that the need to think differently about risk has never been clearer. 

Yet while the emerging risks that many are facing may be new and unfamiliar, the things that are most important to your enterprise, employees, investors, customers, and community, remain the same–despite being sometimes obscured in the heat of the moment.

To refocus, start by taking 15 minutes to truly consider what your stakeholders value most. These may be areas of value such as reliable products, privacy for sensitive information, trust, safety, building up the community, predictable performance, industry leadership, real-time access to information, accessibility, and more.

Next, consider what risks pose the biggest threat to these areas of value, and what steps you can take, even with relatively few resources, to successfully navigate around them. Don’t procrastinate but start now; be creative; take small steps; and keep moving forward to protect what is most important to you and the organizations and communities you engage with.

Our Risk Innovation Planner is designed to take you through this process, step by step, as it helps you to identify key areas of value, often-hidden risks, and action steps to navigate a complex risk landscape. Download it for free here. Use it now, and follow up in the coming months, updating as needed. 

And please, check back in for more information on the Risk Innovation Nexus approach, our resources, and our tools and services.